• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Things That Are NOT UFOs

A couple of nights ago I experienced the whole 'light going extremely fast and then vanishing' thing! I'd just glanced up whilst taking the dog for her late night wee, and saw a very bright light seemingly moving really quickly, and then disappearing. However, because it was windy and the stars were very clear, I kept looking upwards and then realised what it was that I was looking at.

It wasn't a light moving, it was the clouds moving quickly in the high wind. It made it look as though one very bright star was streaming through the sky - the giveaway was the fact that it wasn't moving relative to anything else, it was just the background moving. Then a bigger cloud came by and obscured the star altogether.

I admit to being slightly disappointed, but also impressed by the way my brain made a stationary object seem to be shooting away from me, simply due to clouds!
 
Jupiter, Mars and Venus are all really bright at the moment, and Sirius, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Capella and several other first magnitude stars are up there too. Plenty to see in the Early night sky.
 
A couple of nights ago I experienced the whole 'light going extremely fast and then vanishing' thing! I'd just glanced up whilst taking the dog for her late night wee, and saw a very bright light seemingly moving really quickly, and then disappearing. However, because it was windy and the stars were very clear, I kept looking upwards and then realised what it was that I was looking at.

It wasn't a light moving, it was the clouds moving quickly in the high wind. It made it look as though one very bright star was streaming through the sky - the giveaway was the fact that it wasn't moving relative to anything else, it was just the background moving. Then a bigger cloud came by and obscured the star altogether.

I admit to being slightly disappointed, but also impressed by the way my brain made a stationary object seem to be shooting away from me, simply due to clouds!
But that doesn't account for it when there are no clouds in the sky, and you watch the whole movement of whatever-it-is from one horizon to the other over about 5 seconds - too slow for a meteorite, too fast for a plane or satellite.
Probably the wrong thread though.
 
A couple of nights ago I experienced the whole 'light going extremely fast and then vanishing' thing! I'd just glanced up whilst taking the dog for her late night wee, and saw a very bright light seemingly moving really quickly, and then disappearing. However, because it was windy and the stars were very clear, I kept looking upwards and then realised what it was that I was looking at.

It wasn't a light moving, it was the clouds moving quickly in the high wind. It made it look as though one very bright star was streaming through the sky - the giveaway was the fact that it wasn't moving relative to anything else, it was just the background moving. Then a bigger cloud came by and obscured the star altogether.

I admit to being slightly disappointed, but also impressed by the way my brain made a stationary object seem to be shooting away from me, simply due to clouds!
Easily done!
 
But that doesn't account for it when there are no clouds in the sky, and you watch the whole movement of whatever-it-is from one horizon to the other over about 5 seconds - too slow for a meteorite, too fast for a plane or satellite.
Probably the wrong thread though.
Oh it absolutely doesn't account for most sightings! I wasn't implying that it did - only that it happened to me and confused me for a moment or two.
 
Pentagon reports another Chinese balloon going across Latin America !

How many of these balloons are out there ?

NOAA puts American’s Chinese balloon over our middle Tennessee town around Sunday morning on its way to the eastern coast.

Are we sure this is not an extraterrestrial coverup with China agreeing to be the “ fall guy “.

I am getting suspicious of what the truth is ?

The Chinese regime accepts that the second balloon is theirs.

The Chinese government has admitted a balloon spotted over Latin America on Friday is from China - but claimed it is intended for civilian use.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the aircraft had deviated from its route, having been blown off course. A similar balloon was shot down in US airspace by military jets on Saturday amid allegations that it was being used for surveillance. China has denied accusations of spying, saying it was monitoring the weather. The incident has led to a diplomatic row between Washington and Beijing.

On Friday - before fighter jets brought down the balloon at the weekend - US military officials said a second Chinese balloon had been spotted over Latin America.

On Monday, China admitted an aircraft had "accidentally entered Latin American and Caribbean airspace".

Ms Mao told reporters the second balloon had "deviated greatly" from its intended route, citing the aircraft's "limited manoeuvrability" and the weather conditions.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-64537098
 
The Chinese regime accepts that the second balloon is theirs.

The Chinese government has admitted a balloon spotted over Latin America on Friday is from China - but claimed it is intended for civilian use.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the aircraft had deviated from its route, having been blown off course. A similar balloon was shot down in US airspace by military jets on Saturday amid allegations that it was being used for surveillance. China has denied accusations of spying, saying it was monitoring the weather. The incident has led to a diplomatic row between Washington and Beijing.

On Friday - before fighter jets brought down the balloon at the weekend - US military officials said a second Chinese balloon had been spotted over Latin America.

On Monday, China admitted an aircraft had "accidentally entered Latin American and Caribbean airspace".

Ms Mao told reporters the second balloon had "deviated greatly" from its intended route, citing the aircraft's "limited manoeuvrability" and the weather conditions.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-64537098
If they were just weather balloons then why all the fuss from China? There just unimportant weather balloon's, right!
 
If they were just weather balloons then why all the fuss from China? There just unimportant weather balloon's, right!
They're gathering useful data on airflow for release of a viral agent into the upper atmosphere...
 
If they were just weather balloons then why all the fuss from China? There just unimportant weather balloon's, right!

They are absolutely vast though, hence the extreme caution as to where and when to shoot it down.

"the balloon was several hundred feet tall, the payload - the portion which would have carried equipment - was about the same size as a regional airliner."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64548140
 
The rogue Canadian weather balloon which proved difficult to shoot down.

Twenty-five years later, Dale Sommerfeldt can laugh about the rogue weather balloon that resisted the firepower of air forces from three nations trying to bring it down.

But he admits at the time it was a headache for those involved.

In 1998, a technical malfunction meant the research balloon had failed to come down as planned, in two or three days' time.
Instead, it began to drift across Canada towards the Atlantic Ocean. Mr Sommerfeldt, who works for the Canadian engineering firm Scientific Instrumentation Ltd, which built the instrumentation for the balloon, said it had been meant for "strictly scientific research" related to ozone. The Canadian balloon was a different style from the Chinese balloon shot down over the weekend by the US, he added, noting that "those are intended to stay up for weeks or even a month at a time."

It was a massive thing - the size of a 25-storey building that would cover an area equivalent to five football pitches if deflated, according to a BBC report from the time. The helium-filled balloon was launched from the province of Saskatchewan in late August of 1998, to conduct research for the Canadian Space Agency, Environment Canada and the University of Denver in the US.

But the researchers quickly realised something had gone wrong. A valve that would allow the balloon to naturally release gas and deflate over time had ended up covered by a piece of plastic. It was not long before they had lost control of it.

"The termination device failed and the backup system failed and that's why the balloon is where it is right now,″ Mr Sommerfeldt told the Associated Press news agency in 1998.

On Monday he told the BBC: "It was just subject to whatever the winds were."

An attempt to bring it down was made off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, but to no avail. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64546767
 
Research balloons that travel to the upper stratosphere are often very large. Normal weather balloons are 6 metres in diameter and travel to 30 km, while high-level balloons are 80 metres in diameter and reach 40+km.
balloon-comparison_orig.jpg


So these Chinese balloons could be research balloons; the question is, what are they researching?
 
I took this photo for the scrunched-up effect the winds were having on the contrail as the aircraft receded into the distance. When I looked at it on a monitor the wake vortices are are interacting with the contrail as it dissipates and leaving doughnuts!

contrail.jpg
 
The U.S. government confirmed the Chinese balloon was full of spying electronics.

The Chinese government is demanding all parts of the balloon to be returned to China because it’s their stuff ?
 
Once they pay for the missile, fuel, hire of F22 and p&p they can have it back
 
The U.S. government confirmed the Chinese balloon was full of spying electronics.
The Chinese government is demanding all parts of the balloon to be returned to China because it’s their stuff ?
This reminds me of Project Genetrix, a US program that sent 516 spy balloons over the Soviet Union between 10 January and 6 February 1956. They were launched from Scotland, Norway, Turkey and West Germany. Of these 516 balloons, only 54 were recovered and only 31 produced usable data.

The Soviet Union recovered most of the others, and utilised the radiation-hardened photographic film in their own space missions, including Luna 3, to capture the first images of the far side of the Moon. Waste not, want not, eh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Genetrix
 
Last edited:
Research balloons that travel to the upper stratosphere are often very large. Normal weather balloons are 6 metres in diameter and travel to 30 km, while high-level balloons are 80 metres in diameter and reach 40+km.
balloon-comparison_orig.jpg


So these Chinese balloons could be research balloons; the question is, what are they researching?
Maybe I'm mistaken. . . but wasn't there something posted on here that I'd read about - along with a photo, (I did a quick search, but unfortunately I couldn't locate it), about some mysterious ground aerial's (?) that some mountain climbers had stumbled across at the very top of certain mountains?
Makes me wonder if they might well have played some part in this balloon fiasco?
 
Maybe I'm mistaken. . . but wasn't there something posted on here that I'd read about - along with a photo, (I did a quick search, but unfortunately I couldn't locate it), about some mysterious ground aerial's (?) that some mountain climbers had stumbled across at the very top of certain mountains?
Makes me wonder if they might well have played some part in this balloon fiasco?
Yes there was.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...e-appearing-in-utahs-hills.70161/post-2230968
 
Back
Top