UFO Lights over Charlotte NC 15 October 2016

a reply to: Springer

So, what do you all think? :-)

I think it's something we're all here for and well known that we are always asking for confirmation although we actually really don't need it..

a reply to: Phage

Some of them go back, while others pass how do you explain that, and the wind speeds at that height isn't that higher than on the ground those balloons would already be out of sight if you ask me?

What about the distance between the lines, I mean at that height looking from camera position the line between the balloons should be like a mile long ?

a reply to: beetee

They are never obscured by the clouds. When he is zoomed in you can see they are below the clouds. Any appearance of them
going behind clouds could be due to the fact he is using a phone camera at night and his hand is not steady. Several times when they appear to have a cloud pass in front of them you can see everything goes out of focus.

a reply to: raymundoko

Well, it sure looks to me like they are going behind the clouds quite a few times.

In addition he clearly states a few times that they are behind the clouds and that they reappear because there is a hole in the clouds, and I guess he is using his eyes to make that assumption.

The human eye is a pretty good piece of optics compared to a mobile phone, and although this is hardly proof of anything, I think it is a strong indication that these things are actually above the lowest cloud layer.

You can also hear him say that we can clearly see how overcast the sky is, which is not very well seen in the video, which againg contrasts what the can see with his eyes to what we see in the actual footage.

Not saying you are wrong, but I doubt his eyes would be fooled by going out of focus even if his camera was as you suggest.

BT

I have no clue what that is but it's cool, whatever it is!

Maybe a group of drone/model airplane enthusiasts were staying at the hotel?? Lol. Really, idk what it is.

S&F! Nice find, OP. This forum has been kinda stale lately!

originally posted by: continuousThunder
okay so if it's LED balloons tethered somehow
how do they shift between those two formations that they hold reasonably well for so long?
not saying it has to be aliens
but i just can't think of a way for that to work
not without some serious effort
in which case you would think they might have gotten some more impressive lights idk

Winds aloft change with altitude. It would make sense if they are balloons, that the higher they go, they would all react to varying stability of the atmosphere causing the array to fold and stretch.

a reply to: beetee

From what he says it's clear he thinks the blinking is the clouds going in front of the lights. When watching the video we know that's not the case. The blinking is consistent if you watch a single light at a time. It appears to be a link LED light on flash mode.

Edit: My co worker made a valid point though, this appears to be downtown and that could be steam from any hundreds of restaurants around that hotel. He is from charlotte and he says due to the humidity steam rises off almost every building at night causing an artificial fog layer, I know Savannah can do this same effect on cooler nights.

Edit 2: sure enough if you search google images for charlotte fog it gets very foggy at dusk, night and dawn due to the cities heat in the cool humid weather.

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: Springer

Very cool springer...

i've seen videos like this before... never heard a good explanation though

Good that the camera man keeps the building in frame for a point of reference

S&F

That point of reference reveals whatever it is drifting slowly away, probably at wind speed.

From the comments section below video:

Anyone care to explain why an alien species with intergalactic space travel technology therefore highly intelligent, wish to travel however many light years just to hover in the sky and play "blinky lights" with us when they're not abducting rednecks and studying our anuses?

I'm going to go out on a limb but it's possible it could have been a blimp. The Panthers game was on Sunday and I know the blimps are around when they play here in Charlotte. I could be wrong though.

Blimps have these big screen TVs on the side of them, right? Can make any pattern they pre program. If it changes perspective, could be just turning the blimp.

Or how about hanging strings of blinking lights from a drone or drones?

Had a flashback to Bobby Bloom and the Holiday Inn on Montego Bay but the boat horns were in the wrong key.

Okay I had made a quick comment earlier not having actually watched the entire video because I was driving down the road. But after having watched it I realized that these objects could be very small objects and therefore would probably not show up on radar.
As far as them being balloons with some type of light attached to them. That doesn't seem likely to me. The fact that they seem to maintain a fixed altitude would argue against that imo, and if you tethered a group of balloons they would group together in a much tighter group. Possibly if each balloon had its own tether you may be able to create a similar effect. As far as them being drones. I think it would be very difficult to fly a group of drones that closely together in the dark without crashing them. Bottom line is IDK what they are.

a reply to: Springer

Ok...I saw something very similar this past weekend, around 2200 CDT on Saturday. I was walking my dog and saw what I thought was a jet on approach for landing. I deduced this from the fact that it appeared to be getting larger and brighter and was doing so at a great velocity.

I looked at it for maybe five or six seconds, noted it appeared to be on approach, and went inside. I did notice that the lights didn't seem right; they were a strange blue-white and were flashing in an odd, disjointed pattern, but I decided it was a military jet and who the hell knows what they've got tooling around up there, right?

So I get my other dog leashed up, and take her out there. This maybe took about five minutes, tops. I'm going down the sidewalk and I look up, and I'm totally astonished to see the same blinking lights, quite a bit closer than before I walked inside, but no longer moving.

I stood out there for a long time watching this thing, probably five or six minutes. The dog wanted to go back in so I decided to chance it and hurry in and grab the binoculars. So I did, right away, and ran back outside. It was still there, in the same position. I walked out a ways and looked at it a bit closer and it looked like bars of lights in an "X" shape.

Then I looked at it through the glasses and it was extremely bright but if I squinted, I could look at it better. It seemed like the lights were on a structure that was shaped like an "X", sort of a scaffolding type construct. It appeared to be floating or hovering. I realized that the lights were all around it, so that it would be visible from all angles.

It stayed up there for a while. About fifteen minutes all total. When it left, it started to recede and grow smaller, and then it just disappeared. I have no idea what I was looking at, but it wasn't a string of lights. It was above the trees and power lines. I keep looking for it but so far it hasn't returned.

a reply to: Urantia1111

Agreed! the video of a launch of balloons clearly shows that the balloons DID look like the lights, but then the lights were already out of view within 1 minute. The U(nidentified)FO video lasted for about 8 or 9 minutes.

originally posted by: Phage

Just how powerful do you think those LEDs are? The lights in the OP's video were above the clouds, which, according to a post in this thread, were at 9,000 feet (nearly 2 miles; and even the lowest clouds are over a mile high), and they were being seen, at least partially, through the clouds. Do you think that a tiny LED plus its power source, light enough to be easily lifted by a small helium balloon like in the video you embedded, can be seen from nearly 2 miles away through clouds?

Whatever they were, they seemed to be about as bright as aircraft lights. Any electrical lamp with enough wattage to produce enough lumens to be seen at such a distance through clouds would need a substantial battery to keep it powered for a significant length of time, and substantial batteries are big and heavy. Consider how quickly a car's headlights can drain its 50-lb. battery if the engine isn't running.

Also, LED lamps stuffed inside of balloons, by their very nature, can not produce a focused beam, so tricks to get more usable output from electrical lamps, such as the well-designed reflectors in flashlights and car headlights, aren't applicable here. The balloons would create diffused, omnidirectional lighting; good for lighting up a room, not so good for projecting light a mile or two.

a reply to: raymundoko

I don't agree, there are several times they appear to be above the clouds without the shooter zooming in.

a reply to: tigertatzen

So, what do you think you saw? An array of balloons on a structure/frame, a drone with an "x" frame, or what?

What does your gut/mind tell you you were looking at?

Did you have any sort of a "feeling" about it?

I'd guess it could also be something similar to this:



Maybe perhaps not as organized as an event like in the video, but the same kind of idea behind it. Perhaps contact the various local colleges, R/C clubs, and maybe even guys with commercial ventures like CharlotteUAV. If there's some backstory involving people, those would be the ones most likely in-the-know.

I've never heard of LED balloon lights on a string until I saw that video. It has no connected structure because each light is moving independant of each other. Blinking LED balloons with three modes of flashing are easily had.
"Balloon Lites have an ultra bright LED with three modes: Slow Blink, Fast Blink, or Constant On."
www.party-lights.com...

Another vote for blinking balloon LEDs.

a reply to: Springer

If you go to Google Maps, drag the little yellow man down to E Stonewall St just after the intersection of E Stonewall St & S McDowell St.


Then aim the construction site. Now I was wondering, is this what they are seeing? These cranes often have flashing lights so that aircraft see them at night.


It's a guess. From what I can tell, that construction site doesn't have that crane there now, but maybe there was one nearby to cause that effect.

There is an international airport not far to the west as well which does make me think that the video is of lights flashing on a nearby crane.

There must be someone on this board that live close by who can contact the airport and ask if they noticed the balloons some idiots were flying less than 10 km from their tower.

Also I would very much like to know what the time was.

BT

originally posted by: Ectoplasm8
I've never heard of LED balloon lights on a string until I saw that video. It has no connected structure because each light is moving independant of each other. Blinking LED balloons with three modes of flashing are easily had.
"Balloon Lites have an ultra bright LED with three modes: Slow Blink, Fast Blink, or Constant On."
www.party-lights.com...

Another vote for blinking balloon LEDs.

I would like someone to show me an LED balloon, powered by two button cell watch batteries (a whopping total of 3 volts [when wired in series] and about 60 mAh [30 mAh × 2] capacity), which can be seen from a mile away, let alone nearly two miles away and through clouds. That pair of tiny watch batteries can power the LED balloons you linked to for 6 to 8 hours in constant-on mode, which means the LED lamp is only drawing about 10 mA at the most (1/100th of 1 amp). 10 mA @ 3 volts = 30 milliwatts (3/100ths of 1 watt).

From how far away do you think a 30 milliwatt LED lamp, diffused by a translucent balloon, can be seen? LED lamps are more efficient than incandescent lamps, but not magically so.

Suppose you had one of those cheap $5 LED flashlights like are sold from a counter display at your local hardware store. Keep in mind that those usually have something like 6 or 9 LEDs and an AA battery with a capacity of 2,500 mAh or more. Also keep in mind that those, being flashlights, are designed to project a focused beam. Now suppose you were in an aircraft nearly 2 miles up, above some clouds, and you leaned out and shined the flashlight at the ground. Do you think anyone on the ground would see it? How about if you then hobble it by stuffing it in a balloon?