Unknown orange/red glow over Pacific Ocean

a reply to: jpcvanheijst

Thanks for the update!

I have embedded the photos you mentioned in this post:

Comparing the shots of naval/fishing fleets with the original pics, I'm struck by the impression that the OG pics of the odd phenom look subsurface... while the light sources from fleets posted above seem sourced above the surface... while not being very similar at all. The first pics, even allowing for longer exposures, look much brighter.

I don't pretend to have advanced photographic knowledge... just that it looks that way to this layman.

I'm really fascinated by this and still waiting for an explanation that says "solved!" to me... I await the promised analysis.

At this point, a fleet of "UFOs" is almost a more likely explanation than most of the prosaic ideas... so odd. Really, really odd. But from the info regarding the Russian "missile tests," I wonder if we are seeing secret tech of some sort?

a reply to: AnonymousWitness

Thanks AnonymousWitness! For some reason I cant add any photos, your help makes it a bit more visual for others.



a reply to: Baddogma
thanks and indeed, they look different. Though personally I did not get the impression they were submerged. A low cloud layer or even sea-mist could have made them look very vague and stretched out. Though they look much brighter then any other light sources that other pilots have seen.
Problem is just that its too much of a coincidence that they have seen those strange red lights over the Pacific... my analytic mind just says they are very likely related. But as I said, I do agree they look different and less bright then the ones we saw.

a reply to: AnonymousWitness

I am kinda late in this party... i know the premise, but can someone summarize to me what has so far been the main discussion points in this thread?
My first guess was somethiing along the lines of a natural phenomenon (many of which exist on the earth). or maybe a more exotic theory but 25 pages is a bit much, i just wanna know the main direction (if any) this has taken.....

Hi,
thanks for the update jpcvanheijst!

To me it seems to confirm that the lights were due to military fleet.

We now have confirmation that the location of the sighting is currently used for military tests and that similar red lights have been seen several other times by pilots (so not a rare event).

The lights seem "much less bright and a lot smaller" probably because of:
_ camera "settings" (your picture were taken with long exposure, fisheye, and extremely high ISO).
_ lights that seems more scattered on the new pictures (especially on the center of the cluster of lights).
_ weather condition (fog and clouds which can act "as a screen" and increase the feeling of brightness).

Note it's not total night on the last of the new pictures, which also makes the lights looks less bright.
imagizer.imageshack.us...

Do you have the camera settings for the new pictures?

a reply to: combatmaster

Long story short; I saw some strange red/orange lights over the Pacific and we're trying to figure out what it was
In the first 21 pages or so I have been accused of hoaxing and pranking, and many questions have been raised about how I could take steady shots with long shutter times. I've joined the discussion, explained how I take the photos (which is basically a hobby of mine anyway) and (hopefully) took away the idea that its a big hoax.
On page 22 I've posted a list of possible causes with their pro's & con's..
No decisive reports or answers yet.



a reply to: Fl078

It looks like more then a coincidence indeed that other (less bright) groups of red lights have been spotted over that area (mind you, we're talking about a huge surface of ocean there) in the last few months.

I agree that the lights look less bright, I can tell that with the naked eye the lights we saw were really, really bright too. Just like on the pictures I've uploaded. Much larger and brighter then the other pilots photos show.
Of course my photos have been taken with a bit more professional gear and with a longer shutter-time (settings of new photos is unknown, maybe exif might reveal something?), but none the less do the lights look much less intense on those photos.
For sure, some fog or clouds might make them look much bigger, but then again, I have seen many ships/lights/cities from high up in the midnight sky, and Im sure that what we saw was just extremely bright underneath that layer of clouds.

Received a few very interesting emails and information from Russian Kamchatka based scientists from the 'Distant school of Cosmic Meteo Tectonics'; cosmetecor.org... that have investigated my sighting too.
They suspect this might have something to do with so called 'earthquake lights' because of a strong electromagnetic interaction between the earths core and atmosphere.

Quote;
"Similar phenomenon you’ve recently observed was being detected in winter 2002-03 in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. There were carried out field research by our collective on day-by-day basis near Petropavlovsk. There was nothing abnormal to expect. But one day, on Friday, anomalous increasing of amplitude of the subterranean electric signals (in 5-10 times) was observed. When sun went down (~18:00 local time) and it became dark, the sky was reddish with shades of green. The phenomenon resembled with aurora, but Petropavlovsk is in latitude 53° North. The tops of hometown volcanoes were burning with red. Townsfolk began to call to emergency service, officials. Town was full of rumors in the same manner as your post. Thanks to the unique SE-technique we knew what was happened.
I’d like to point your attention that the brightest line of radiation of hydrogen atom (H-alpha -Нα) is a blood-red spectral line with a wavelength of 656.28 nanometers. The less bright line of radiation of hydrogen atom is H-beta, which has a cyan (blue-green) spectral line with a wavelength of 486 nanometers.

Here I’ve attached SE-signals measured at station no.2-IMFSET-Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy ~380 km from the observed phenomena. Abrupt step-down was detected on 2014/08/23 11:55UT and back on 2014/08/25 06:37UT.

Let me note that many decades military and civilian pilots have reported other spectacular phenomena seeing ephemeral flashes above storms, though these were mostly discounted by the atmosphere science community. The different kinds of flashes are called with fanciful names like sprites, elves, jets, trolls, gnomes, pixies and fairies. The first scientific documentation of brilliant mysterious glows (flashes) occurring between troposphere-ionosphere was captured on videotape on the night of July 06, in 1989 by Dr. J.Winckler. Who knows, maybe, your photos will play important role in future researching."

Unfortunately and annoyingly Im still unable to upload photos, but for the mentioned reading, see this photo/link;

www.pbase.com...

Maybe its related. Maybe not....

a reply to: jpcvanheijst

Here you go:



Link to full resolution:

files.abovetopsecret.com...

I will send you a private message with instructions on how to embed photos.

Hi jpcvanheijst,
about the new pictures you posted, are they from 3 different sightings?

Do you have the exact position for the third picture?
imagizer.imageshack.us...

Thanks in advance!

a reply to: Fl078

Hi,

No the first two are from the same photographer, the other is from another pilot.
Unknown location, except for 'somewhere between Japan and Alaska'.

Thanks!

a reply to: jpcvanheijst

In the first 21 pages or so I have been accused of hoaxing and pranking,

I am not surprised skeptics wont believe anything until they see either videos or see it for themselves not all skeptics are the same though.

Hi,
got some news thanks to Nablator and Chris from a french forum!

Nablator found an investigation about the sighting:
Investigating Mysteries of the Deep, Dark Night

The most interesting is that the investigator found something on satellite pictures (VIIRS), at right location.



The picture with red frame was taken 4 hours after the sighting.

Here is a comparison with the picture of the sighting.



Despite the different perspective (plane vs satellite), it's matching pretty well.


"Analyzing" the different satellite pictures, it becomes obvious that lights are from boats, and probably from a fishing fleet.
There are too many lights, every day, almost the same location, and many other days look very close to usual fishing fleet sightings.
Exemple, same exact location but 5 days later:


Thanks again to Chris for his precious help!

PS: I add this map, made by Chris , superimposing:
The map with the official Russian Navy zone in red
The route of the plane (in red) and Russian Navy rocket test zone in effect 2 month after the sighting in blue (provided by JPC)
A= location of the plane at 11h21
B= location of the lights from the pictures of the satellite (taken 4 hours later)



It's not 100% perfect, but quite accurate and it helps!

Wow that's very interesting. It was published on September 4th already... a pity I never read it before.
Could you email me the last map with the locations in high-res Fl078?

It sure does look like a group of ships when I see all this data but then the new questions pops up; what kind of ships were they?
As I explained earlier, its highly unlikely that they are fishing ships since they use red lights and the wavelength of red light is totally useless for fishing.

My educated guess would be a fleet of military ships carrying red lights, though I find it very strange that they used lights that were so extremely bright.

I agree, beautiful photos. Its like a weird aurora borealis lighting mixed with crazy earthquakes. Maybe the red was lava from the earths crust.
.....or maybe it was aliens.
There are plenty of underwater bases we have no clue about!
Governmental and ALIEN!
a reply to: Glassbender777

a reply to: Fl078

The satellite images are interesting...

But I do not see how you come to the conclusion that the bright spots are 'obviously' fishing boats. It seems to me that Vanheijst would have recognized a fishing fleet for what it is. His implications have been that this phenomena was unlike anything he had seen.

I think the Distant School of Cosmic Meteo Tectonics is much closer to the truth than any of us are.

Hi OpenMindedRealist,
did you go to the very informative investigation linked above, to check the satellite pictures? and the gif?

Here is the satellite picture of the day of the sighting (taken 4 hours later):


The location of the sighting is the top spot of lights (center of the picture).
Keep in mind the excess of white on the sat pictures is due to camera sensitivity, when there are several spots close.
The most important is you can notice there is not only 1 location concerned about the lights, but also a bigger spot (South) and some other small spots...

Same about the day before:


Or the day after:


So with this, we can conclude this is not a unique or extraordinary event, but that it appears daily at the almost same exact location (+ other locations at the same time).


Check the gif from the location of the sighting:


You see the location is not the exact same everyday, so it seems obvious it can't be natural phenomenom!



Moreover, as said before the arrangement/"shape" of the lights on the other days is very similar to usual fishing fleet sightings.

Here are some examples of fishing fleets (note quality is a lot better on the following than sat pictures):


picture by Reid Wiseman who commented: "Could all those white lights off the coast of #Taiwan be fishing boats? Hard to believe."
So you see the pilot is not the only one to be surprised!





closer:


Now if we compare with the satellite pictures of the day of the sighting:


So the arrangement of the spots of lights looks the same, and it "moves" as fishing fleet would over the days.



The only last thing which is unexplained is the red color of the lights (fishing fleet lights are very bright and even seen from space, so nothing strange about it), but with all the information we got, pointing in direction of fleet, and more particularly fishing fleet, it's just a detail (strange I admit), but no way we can't exclude the fishing fleet only because of the uncommon color.

Keep in mind the pilot is amazing photographer and manage to magnify the phenomenom, which makes the pictures even more impressive.
The very bright red on the cloud is due to long exposure, as you can see comparing the picture with 8 sec exposure with the one with 3 seconds exposure (taken only 30 sec after).

8 seconds exposure


3 seconds exposure

a reply to: Fl078

A side note to the pictures you posted and I've said it already many times before; I have very often seen (large) fleets of fishing fleets at night, from all sorts of angles and in all weather conditions. They never looked like this to me.

The 'problem' here is the red light and the position of the lights in comparison to the continental plate.

You have posted one of the images of the Argentina fishing fleet at night. On the same page (earthobservatory.nasa.gov...) you can also see where the ships are in comparison to the continental plate.
See composed and photo and indication of fleet;


And as you can see on the link below; the lights we saw (and where they apparently were for a long time) was far from the fishing grounds over the continental plate, but far away in the deep sea.


The location and intense red colors are for me the main reason to be seriously doubtful about a fishing fleet as the cause of these red lights.

a reply to: Fl078

I did look at your images. Thanks for putting that all together. It has helped give me some perspective.

Still, I disagree that they are fishing lights. The spots in the area of the sighting are huge -- larger than the nearby city of Sapporo. None of the fishing fleets in the other images quite resemble the large, solid spots in the area of the sighting.

You assume that because the spots are not in te exact same location a day later, it cannot be natural. What if the source of the light was something in the water? Would it not then drift with current? The Russian scientist did mention irradiated hydrogen...

Vanheijst makes a valid point about fishing grounds, as well. Once again, I refer to his knowledge as an expert witness.