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Things That Are NOT UFOs

OZ_UFOsighting___Super_Portrait.jpg


https://www.durhamregion.com/news-s...grapher-captures-unidentified-flying-object-/
 
Got a slightly curly one. Out stargazing last weekend, newish moon, no cloud cover at all, about 90min after sunset (winter) and already a dozen mundane satellites spotted - two oddities. These announced themselves about 20 minutes apart, each with a flash on the periphery of my eyesight, and when I zoomed in on the area, they flashed again. Then they just flared mildly about every ten seconds for a couple of minutes and were no more. They had a definite linear trajectory, same as a regular satellite, but that intermittent slow brightening, which was definitely a new one to me.

I have heard about iridium flares from orbiting craft. Is this the most likely explanation?
 
Yes - that's the most likely explanation nowadays. However, each of the objects whose gleaming you observed may well have been something other than an Iridium satellite.
 
Perhaps they were satellites rotating slowly and their irregular panels were reflecting intermittently.

A couple of months ago, I witnessed a satellite drag race. Both machines were on the same trajectory from my standpoint and one overtook the other in a canter. Of course there were probably hundreds of miles between them.
 
skinny said:
Perhaps they were satellites rotating slowly and their irregular panels were reflecting intermittently. ...
Click to expand...

Yes - that's the very definition of a 'flare' in this context. The Iridium satellites each have proportionally large flat antenna arrays that present this effect on a regular basis. Given the number and configuration of satellites in the Iridium constellation, many - and typically the brightest - such flares were associated with Iridium units. As a result, such flaring came to be called 'Iridium flaring'.

Years ago skywatchers often referred to the phenomenon as 'glint' rather than 'flare'. Personally, I prefer this or other labels that more clearly indicate it involves reflection rather than some sort of light generated by the satellite itself.
 
How strange. I independently designated that phenomenon as "glinters". Been seeing them for years. The slow oscillating flare is a new one. I wonder what's next.
 
It's only going to be in space for 2 months according to the blurb.
 
RaM said:
Google Earth
Lat 51°23'1.61"N
Long 0°34'54.88"W


Not a gull but a bird all the same.
:abduct:
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More explanation required. Is that Vilemov? Does it require Street View?
 
No your right it wont work will have another go.
 
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Oh, that! Yes, I was recently trying to find a way to get to see that. It's not that far from where my folks live.
 
It's bigger than I would have thought judging by the number of containers
needed to hide it
 
Google are testing balloons to deliver internet over a wide area, these balloons
seem to be launched in groups of 3 and have a float height of around 60,000 ft
there are 3 off the east cost of the US at the moment heading east at about
50 mph a fighter seemed to be taking interest in them yesterday but they
are still there today, it may be interesting if they make it across the Atlantic
what they look like if they can be seen and if they generate and UFO reports.
 
On Facebook Phil Smith reports the following:
https://www.facebook.com/mythogeography/posts/1870956289600756

I saw my first UFO today. It was an instructive experience. I came out of our house, mid afternoon, and the herring gulls were making that alarm call that they do when they are scared for their chicks. I looked up, and there was something big gliding above the house. I thought at first it was a giant hawk, bigger than a buzzard. We see buzzards fairly regularly. I was walking to the railway station and I saw the thing between the trees and buildings as I went along; the second time I saw it I thought it must be a drone; the shape was fairly solid and some parts pointed up like they might be the casing for the rotor blades. It moved smoothly, but then dipped suddenly. I reckoned it was about twenty metres above the ground. The next time I saw it I thought it might be some kind of large novelty balloon that had become deflated and was caught in the wind, which was quite strong today. It seemed all of one colour, brownish grey. The shape was odd, abject. That was the last I saw of it. It was not very large, at most it was four or five feet in length (I guess, I had nothing to scale it by). There was a saucer-like quality to it; and the structure was almost fixed, but flimsy too, with anomalous elements. Now, here's the thing: it did not look anything like an 'alien craft' to me; it was blown not piloted. Not in a million years would I imagine it to be a 'flying saucer'. It looked like a deflated balloon. BUT, not being able to identify it, and the way my identifying of it shifted across different possibilities, without my ever being sure of any one identity - it never looked liked any one thing - made a very distinct and unsettling impression on me. And - perhaps for the first time - I could appreciate how such an experience might be narrated in all sorts of different and apparently laughable ways. As the man at the gate of the contactee Arthur Bryant's cottage said to us: "it's a big universe".

Phil Smith is an interesting person to follow on Facebook. Here just one of his youtube performances:
 
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Another report:
I've seen a UFO or three in my life, though most of them were ultimately identified, at least tentatively: high-altitude research balloons, Iridium flashes, and some really scary insects.
http://capitalistimperialistpig.blogspot.nl/2017/12/ufos.html

It ends with this nice speculation:
Of course the reports of alien abductions and returns could just be the alien version of catch and release sport fishing.
 
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