Any flight experts have any idear what i saw? very quiet, low altitude, high speed.

are we talking overflights or landing at a certain infamous remote base??

a reply to: Zaphod58

Done and done. ^_^ One more slightly tangential but potentially related question - any idea what might cause something like this on a weather radar? i.imgur.com...

Site is forecast.io, go to the UK and click 'Local' and you can still see the animation for the next couple of hours. That's the peak of the signal and it appears and disappears entirely within half an hour. I also see the same disturbance on www.metcheck.com... in lower-res, but that should be available for longer if anyone wants to look.

a reply to: spaceaceuk

Yeah, that's a hell of a first sighting right there. Solid yellow color, horizon to horizon in about two minutes or so?

a reply to: Araqiel

Playing with chaff most likely.

yeah Zaph exactly that, was so dead straight i was convinced it was a sattelite just wish id have got the camera out on the phone instead of the star and satellite tracker. any idea what it was? i had my hunches as it was just as the stuff in Ukraine was getting tasty and almost directly east of me is Moscow etc.. maybe im putting two and two together and getting a spicy meatball but who knows. could provide dates and times if anyone needed and probably heading exactly.

a reply to: spaceaceuk

Keep an eye on your messages.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Ah, okay yeah that does make sense. Figured it was far more likely to be something relatively ordinary than incredible, but I figured I'd ask while we were here since I've never seen one that big, and while it's not worth a thread itself by any stretch it's still interesting to me as weather and aircraft are both up my alley. It's also near airspace reserved for military aircraft just to the east of my location, so if there was something unique going on there it'd be well worth knowing about.

a reply to: Araqiel

Depending on the type and packaging chaff does all kinds of weird things to weather radar. I've seen it appear as a huge storm, as "splashes", and just generally strange shapes.

a reply to: Zaphod58

So, what am I seeing exactly?

Horizon to horizon in 2 minutes?

Distance to horizon (in nautical miles) is 1.23 times the square root of the altitude in feet.

Example: FL350 being nominally 35000' above a sea level point. It also assumes the earth to be pretty much a perfect sphere.

Square root of 35,000 is 187.08 (plus some digits)
1.23 X 187.08 = 230.11 (plus some digits)

So the distance to the horizon is about 230 nm (370km) from 35000' - in each direction so that's 230 miles a minute, or 13,800 mph - not even hypersonics do that.

At 60,000 feet the horizon is about 301 miles away - so 18,000 mph, and at 90,000 feet it is 369 miles so 22,140mph.

Perhaps I missed something...but any body doing those speeds is not going to go unnoticed anywhere!!

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: spaceaceuk

Yeah, that's a hell of a first sighting right there. Solid yellow color, horizon to horizon in about two minutes or so?

Oooh, sounds like they saw the same bird as me & a few others did not too long ago, eh? I've been keeping an eye out for it, hoping to grab a shot of it if I can (you know what they say about hope in one hand, and something else in the other and seeing which fills up faster, though)

I have never in the slightest EVER been interested in planes. But by being led here by other threads, I find all this fasicinating. And I eagerly pop into threads like these. As beautiful as these birds sound what purpose do they have? Can anyone say? Have I asked the worst question ever as a newbie to the aviation forum?

Slips out door closing it quietly behind me.

originally posted by: Sammamishman

originally posted by: spaceaceuk
Any ideas where i should be pointing my camera in the uk to try and catch a glimpse of something remarkable?

Scotland.

So I just decided to search Scotland UFO for the heck of it and this pops up. Not the best video but pretty ironic, lol.



Incredibly fast moving UFO over Scotland 2014 HD:

youtu.be...

a reply to: sussy

They serve the purpose of being able to get to anywhere in the world in a relatively short period of time in order to take pictures, or in general gather intelligence on quickly evolving situations around the world. Current satellites can not do this.

A satellite is like a guy on a bench in a park with binoculars. He's not going to miss much In that park. Now what happens when you need to see somethin Across town? Unless you've paid some other guy to sit over there all the time you need to call the guy in the park and tell him to bogey on across town.


Well like satellites a person on foot will take a while. Satellites don't carry a ton of fuel or propulsion devices because that takes away from precious instrument space.

Things don't always happen right where we expect them too. It's a very very powerful card to have in your hand to say "I wanna know exactly what's going on over there RIGHT NOW, and I don't want anyone to know we saw"

Zaphod youre killing me here!

Im around Chicago and I'd do anything to see something remotely cool! I'm ALWAYS looking up at all hours of the day and night. Weirdest thing I saw was what looked like a star that all of a sudden just vanished or fizzled out. It was in the air for a while not really moving, then after a few moments, just winked out or fizzled away or shut off. No choppers, no planes, just mystery. Also seen strange flashes in the night sky with no clouds within 200 miles.

Zaph your cryptic responses are making me go bonkers with wonder and intrigue. I'd kill to see something as cool as what you are hinting at.

a reply to: GenRadek

Always happy to help.

a reply to: GenRadek

Not saying that's what it was, but a geosynchronous satellite that passes into the earth shadow can mimic what you saw.

You know it's funny how sometimes things can click.

I was listening to the news this morning.

www.cnn.com...

U.S. President Barack Obama has authorized reconnaissance flights over Syria as ISIS militants continue to gain ground in the war-ravaged nation, a U.S. official told CNN.

The flights -- seen as a forerunner of possible U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria -- could begin at any point, the official said Monday.

And you know. Makes sense why these birds would be flying that way.

So expect more sightings. Possibly daily.

a reply to: grey580

The one that you are most likely to see will probably go the long way around. The other one is already out of country I'm pretty sure.