I saw lights in the sky. What were they?

Factual Questions
1

At the risk of damaging what paltry credibility I might have around here, I feel compelled in the interest of abolishing ignorance, furthering my own knowledge and heck, just plain finding out what in the world went on last night, to ask this question: There were odd lights in the sky last night. What might they have been?

About quarter after 12 last night, I was on the back porch reading. I glanced, as I always do, at the night sky. I like to note the position of the planets (Jupiter has been nicely visible this month) and I always try to notice Venus and Mars.

So, at first glance, I thought it was one of those planets, but it certainly wasn’t in a position I’d lately seen them. Then it began winking on and off, and, after initially suspecting a plane, I started to wonder. It didn’t move. The blinking was erratic. Then, there were two blinkers. The second blinker seemed to blink in response :eek: to the first.

Now, I’m not an idiot. The lights were visible to me only through the nearly bare branches of the tree line at the back of my lot. I next thought perhaps it was some sort of electrical problem, since the blinking was something like flashes. Not long ago we had a severe ice storm that knocked out power to my home and many in town for a week or more. I was concerned that a loose wire was flaring.

But then a careful look (after dousing the porch light) revealed the lights were higher and clearly behind the power lines. What now.

I stared at them for a while until I weirded out and went into the house. The lights didn’t “circle” or do anything really strange, except behave completely not like plane lights or any other light I’ve ever seen in the sky.

I went upstairs, killed all the lights, and surveyed the scene from a new vantage point. Same behavior. When I went to bed at a little after 1:00, they were still at it.

I checked Cecil on this, just to see if there was any explanation of exactly WHAT a weather balloon, or any of the other explanations of purported UFO sightings :rolleyes: really are.

From Why are UFO sightings always at night?

I didn’t see anything but erratically blinking lights. I really would like to know what it was. We do have a small airport in our city, and the lights I saw were in its general direction. That’s the best explanation I can think of … something at the airport. Can anyone help?

2

The phone’s ringing. It’s Fox Mulder–he’d like to speak with you.

3

So the lights were in a fixed position, unmoving ?

Definately blinking…or flashing ?

Did the second light actually repeat what the first light did exactly ?

Did they exhibit any colour ?

Could be beacons of some sort, but then if that is what they are and you have lived for some time with an airport in the vicinity, I am surprised you havnt seen these lights before.

Where the lights high enough off the horizon for you to be sure they were not connected with an object/building on the ground ?

The only other thing I can think of is landing lights on a plane coming straight at you, but you seem to know your sky objects and would have discounted that one and 45 minutes is a long time to fly in a straight line.

4

I’ve seen terrestrial lights reflecting off distant overhead power lines that look like lights in the sky. Perhaps this was what you witnessed.

5

Thanks Buckle. Real helpful :rolleyes:

Chalkpit – No they weren’t absolutely fixed – but did stay within a small area. I marked their relative positions through the tree branches, and from this I could tell they were not in absolutely fixed positions.

Colors, hmm. It seemed to me the blinks occasionally were red, but when I tried to concentrate to verify it, I couldn’t really say for sure.

I agree about the airport. I’ve lived here nearly five years and have seen plenty of planes. And I’m not really that close to it, so I don’t think there’s any flight-path possibilities.

And, they were well above the horizon.

6

Last time I saw something similiar to what you describe, they turned out to be military flares.

Suprisingly bright, long lasting, and freaky if you don’t know what they are. And they can be seen for miles. The first time I saw them, I drove towards them trying to figure out what they were. It took forever before they seemed any closer. By that time, I was getting around the backside of Ft. Campbell, and finally figured out what they were.

7

You do not live in Bagdad do you ?

Declan

8

Why would you even think that? You saw a phenomenon you couldn’t explain butinstead of jumping to a conclusion, gave a detailed explanation like any good skeptic or scientist should.

I can’t explain it either, I’m afraid. It’s too bright for a geosynchronous satellite, and too slow for a low orbit satellite. Since you are familiar with the planets and there hasn’t been any major supernovae recently, I think we can rule out astronomical objects. That leaves us with atmospheric phenomena, aircraft, and terrestrial objects. I’ve been puzzled more than once by lights on tall towers and mountains, but you’re probably familiar with the landscape to rule those out. (Right?)

Was it a definite on/off blinking or a fluctuation, and how fast was it? How far apart were the two objects, and did the relative orientation change at all? Did the objects appear suddenly, or could they have been there before you noticed?

I wonder if they could have been hot air balloons? I don’t know if they can fly in formation, but they do use gas burners to provide lift. Or maybe media helicopters, research airplanes, or some other aircraft that needs to stay above a certain spot.

9

I’m going to jump in and say that what you saw may have been ordinary stars seen through unusual atmospheric conditions.

If (and I am wildly conjecturing here) the area you are in had some unusual weather last night, it might explain the lights you describe. A cell of warm air moving up through the atmosphere will change the appearance of a star (this is what causes stars to twinkle rather than appear as steady points of light). Unusually large or warm cells of air would cause stars to do more than twinkle… they would make stars change color, blink, and might explain the second light “responding” to the first (IE: the cell of air might move between you and the first star, causing the effect you witnessed, and then move further and intersect the line of sight between you and the second star, causing the second star to behave in the same way).

Also, a temperature inversion will sometimes bounce light off of the upper atmosphere, causing things that are on the ground appear to be high in the sky.

Also it could have been aliens. :wink:

More information is needed, I’m afraid… where are you? And what was the weather like the day you saw this?

10

I’m going to jump in and say that what you saw may have been ordinary stars seen through unusual atmospheric conditions.

If (and I am wildly conjecturing here) the area you are in had some unusual weather last night, it might explain the lights you describe. A cell of warm air moving up through the atmosphere will change the appearance of a star (this is what causes stars to twinkle rather than appear as steady points of light). Unusually large or warm cells of air would cause stars to do more than twinkle… they would make stars change color, blink, and might explain the second light “responding” to the first (IE: the cell of air might move between you and the first star, causing the effect you witnessed, and then move further and intersect the line of sight between you and the second star, causing the second star to behave in the same way).

Also, a temperature inversion will sometimes bounce light off of the upper atmosphere, causing things that are on the ground to appear to be high in the sky.

Also it could have been aliens. :wink:

More information is needed, I’m afraid… where are you? And what was the weather like the day you saw this?

11

oops.

12

Thanks scr4, for the reassurance regarding my credibility; it was kind of a joke. :slight_smile:

It seemed to me a definite on/off blinking, but very erratic. It seemed to flare brighter at some times than others. The “response” light didn’t always blink. It was erratic; sometimes “blink-blink-bliiiiiink …blink-blink.” Like that. They would be completely non-visible at some points, and I would think, “that’s that” … and then they would start it up again.

I would say the orientation did change. They did move somewhat, as I said before, but not far. I don’t think they appeared suddenly. I assumed I just noticed them when I happened to glance up that first time. I went out there to read and had been doing it for some minutes before I happened to look up.

I didn’t think about hot-air balloons, but from what little I know about them, I don’t think they fly at night. And it was pretty late for doing that.

Joey, I don’t THINK there’s anything military connected with the airport. And I’m not close to Fort Campbell (but closer than scr4; I AM in Kentucky.)

On Preview I see Astroboy … no unusual weather whatsoever! It warmed up after a brief cold spell, but that’s all. Well, it was windy. Would that cause the kind of thing you’re talking about? But you know, I don’t think it was stars. I was just out there, and there is nothing at all in that space of sky between the branches. I looked. Intensely. LOL

You all, the lights were VERY like planes. They seemed near~ish. (Remember I briefly considered the electrical wires.) Not like stars at all.

13

Ah! Given your reply above, I’m going to guess that it was a temperature inversion… you saw somthing on the ground (maybe miles away) reflected off the inversion layer; and as the atmosphere roiled around the inversion layer, it caused the lights you were seeing reflected to blink, wink, change color, etc. if an random fashion.

That’s my guess!:smiley:

Or it was aliens.

14

PREVIEW, DAMMIT!!!

:smack:

15

scr4 said there aren’t any supernovae right now. Currently the Hubble Space Telescope is sending back pictures of a star called V838 Monoceros, which has expanded to 600,000 times its size, but astronomers aren’t calling it a supernova, precisely, because it’s cool.

I don’t really know much about astronomy. I don’t think this star could be anything remotely connected to what I saw, because we only know about it because we’re seeing it through the Hubble. But I mention it, just because. Here’s an article: Hubble Watches Light Echo From Mysterious Erupting Star

I did consider that I might be seeing the Hubble, though. Does anyone know what a weather balloon looks like? That’s always an explantion for UFO sightings, but I haven’t seen any descriptions of them.

16

Because these lights were appearing near power lines and blinking erratically I would make a guess that they were actually associated with the power lines…
recently there was a UFO reported in Norway at night, near power-lines which turned out to be an unfortunate cat

there is a well documented phenomenon where bright lights at night cannot be aligned in the eye-brain system with darker objects, so you may have subjectively separated the lights from the power lines.

17

Weather balloon? I doubt it… as far as I know they aren’t lighted. I may be wrong about that though… also, a weather balloon wouldn’t stay in place, unless it were tethered to the ground, in which case it might be lighted to warn any planes in the area… damn! I’ve confused myself!

I’m still voting for temperature inversion.

(for the record, I am a fairly experienced amateur astronomer who has seen many "UFO"s… most of which I have been able to explain after due consideration of the scene/situation etc. The weirdest of them was a series of flashing lights that another observer and I saw from inside the dome of an observatory in Maine… it turned out to be a flock of geese flying just above the lights of the university… once in a while one would dip a bit lower, and its white belly would reflect the campus lights. It took us several goose-bump laden minutes to figure that out…)

18

You might want to check out Unconventional Flying Objects by Paul R. Hill. He was a NASA employee and the book wasn’t published until after his death. I haven’t read all of it, but from what I’ve read, he explains pretty conclusively what factors are needed to eliminate natural and man-made phenomena from UFO sightings. It probably won’t answer you question as to what it was, but it might help you eliminate a few possibilities.

19

Okay, Ellen. There was no alien, and the flash of light you saw in the sky wasn’t a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and refracted the light from Venus

20

puts on his cool, dark sunglasses

takes out a silver thing with a little red light on the end

Now, I need you all to look right at this…