UK Police Tweet for help on UFO: Hot, Invisible & Flying into the wind

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978
That's my home City, what is going on?

Just one question, if they couldn't see it with the naked eye, how did they know there was something there in the first place?

Asking the public for suggestions, yeah that sounds like plod alright.

First paragraph of the OP states they were flying with infrared, so that's how the camera saw it when they couldn't.

originally posted by: humanoidlord
chinese lantern:twitter.com...

Chinese lanterns are visible to the naked eye. This object was not.

Swamp gas reflecting light from the planet Venus onto an escaped weather balloon. Case dismissed.

PS: Meteorites.

a reply to: CaptainBeno

It scared the crap out of me whn i first saw it , looks like i have been on conspiracy sites to long and reading about telievisions being used as a tool to spy on you and can be used as a two way screen , For a brief second i thought i saw behind the curtain

originally posted by: Misterlondon
What an odd request.. The police asking for public help in identifying an unidentified flying object.. Never heard of this before.
Guess we can safely assume it was something mundane otherwise the ministry of defence would have been all over it.

They wouldn't publicly be "all over it".. Police usually don't report these since it won't be investigated by police. It's a career killer. So you really can't safely assume anything..

originally posted by: audubon
Swamp gas reflecting light from the planet Venus onto an escaped weather balloon. Case dismissed.

PS: Meteorites.

Well...don't I feel silly now. I thought it was lens flare reflecting off of the carapace of a firefly, which was (obviously) chasing a stray rocket surrounded by a rogue colony of dust mites...cleverly cloaking the whole thing from view. Whatever was I thinking?!?

a reply to: tigertatzen

You wouldn't be the first to have made that mistake. It's easily done.

a reply to: audubon

Well thank you ever so much for setting me straight on that.

a reply to: tigertatzen

All in a day's work.

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978

originally posted by: imjack
Why exactly was he recording in infrared to start with? How did he come about noticing it, if it could only be spotted with infrared?

Yes I did wonder that myself. I would like an answer to that, so may have to do a bit of digging.

Edit - Looked at various articles, including the Bristol Post. No explanation as to why they were using infrared in the first instance, but they did state that they tried using daylight vision and could not pick anything up. Is it normal practice to use the various camera modes whilst they fly around? If it is, then maybe that's how they discovered it, then tried the various modes to establish if it could still be seen?

In this part of year they use IR in search for pot growers - it is ideal thermal situation to discover heat signature of lamps, because it is not too hot to mask it and heating season didn't start yet. Also I think that professional IR camera is pretty standard equipment of police helicopter. Plus it was dark so to switch IR on is at least entertaining.

a reply to: kamatty

I'm from Bristol too there's lots of strange goings on in the sky here

You are staring up the tailpipe of a visually-cloaked single engine jet fighter. It's on a need-to-know basis only, and the Brits aren't high up enough on the food chain to need-to-know.

originally posted by: EHowardHuntClub
You are staring up the tailpipe of a visually-cloaked single engine jet fighter.

Cloaking a jet fighter is feasible, but I would like to know how they managed to drown out the jet noise. The thing was flying at 1,000ft so it would have to be pretty damn silent.

man. If i were able to directly ask the police serious questions about this incident than maybe we can get better speculative answers.

I dont know what is in the video but i personally think its probably mundane.

Personally id dismiss items like "its generating heat" , "its travelling into the wind" and "its invisible to the naked eye"

Its invisible to the naked eye. Well yeah, lots of stuff are undetectable to the naked eye from a distance.....at night. Heck even daytime. So that statement is irrelevent.

Its moving into the wind. How do we really know? The objects over the channel. They have wind sensor stations actually in the channel? Are they using the sensors from the helicopter. How do we know that just a thousand feet away the wind isnt doing something else. Is wind always homogeneous in direction over topography. Especially topography that goes over water and land. Which would be different temps and have different air pressure and winds. Maybe the wind direction was uniform over the region maybe not. Ever seen a dust devil. Wind in two different directions converging.

Its emmiting heat. Again how do we know. Because its hotter than the surrounding air doesnt mean its got some power source generating heat. Could be residual heat from an object bathing in the sun all day like how trees often still emmite residual heat at night or rocks and will show up on thermal and standing out. How sensitive is the flir set. They can set them so that the difference between white and black is 100 ° or 2°. The object might be literally a few degrees warmer than the ambient air.

Things we need to know to make a better guestination of what this object is.

Speed its travelling. Looks like its not going too fast. But again how would we know with the info given.

Distance and size. Radar should have that. It would be nice if they supplied that.

The settings on the flir. And a better approximation of the temp of the object. If its 55° out and the flir is set to present a small thermal envelope of temps and the difference between black and white is five degrees than that object could be 57° on a 55° night.

Also notable is that the object never got above 1000' alt. Balloons can only go so high before they match the density of the air and loose lift. Theyll just hover at a maximum alt. Could be whats going on here. Could be a material that is still slightly warm from the day and cooling slower than the ambient air. Could be travelling gently with the wind where it is and opposite of the wind conditions of that experienced on the helicopter.

Basically we need a lot more info than presented and the police could supply some of it greatly narrowing down what the object may be. But lets not put the cart before the horse yet.

originally posted by: JanAmosComenius

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978

originally posted by: imjack
Why exactly was he recording in infrared to start with? How did he come about noticing it, if it could only be spotted with infrared?

Yes I did wonder that myself. I would like an answer to that, so may have to do a bit of digging.

Edit - Looked at various articles, including the Bristol Post. No explanation as to why they were using infrared in the first instance, but they did state that they tried using daylight vision and could not pick anything up. Is it normal practice to use the various camera modes whilst they fly around? If it is, then maybe that's how they discovered it, then tried the various modes to establish if it could still be seen?

In this part of year they use IR in search for pot growers - it is ideal thermal situation to discover heat signature of lamps, because it is not too hot to mask it and heating season didn't start yet. Also I think that professional IR camera is pretty standard equipment of police helicopter. Plus it was dark so to switch IR on is at least entertaining.

Of course how foolish of me not to have realised that.

a reply to: zazzafrazz

Of course everyone seems to be convieniently ignoring that fact that the object was invisible to the naked eye... What "mundane" object could possibly employ an active visual cloaking device?

a reply to: Gh0stwalker

It may have been invisible to the naked eye but don't forget it was nighttime, so it wouldn't be visible anyways unless it had a light sorce. The timestamp in the video says 20:30-ish but it was actually 21:30, pitch black according to their twitter comment:

Our clock is out by 1hr so it was pitch black. tried on day camera, nothing seen. this clip is just a small part of the vid.

So when the pilot said he couldn't see it in the daylight, he meant to say he couldn't see it with the day camera. Is the day camera on a police helicopter that much better than the naked eye? I don't know, but the point is that just because it couldn't be seen doesn't mean it was cloaked.

BTW it's nice to have a thread with some substance that isn't about the elections.

originally posted by: Gh0stwalker
a reply to: zazzafrazz

Of course everyone seems to be convieniently ignoring that fact that the object was invisible to the naked eye... What "mundane" object could possibly employ an active visual cloaking device?

Could be in cloud cover.

a reply to: Soloprotocol

Could be in cloud cover.

and exactly when looking at it...but once you turn your eyes on the screen...it immediately departs from the cover...and then enters again if you try to look at it with naked eye. Yep. Very plausible.

These are the so called...Smart UFO's or SUFO.