Possible UFO seen outside my house few minutes ago

Heloha, ATS.

So here's what happened:
I went outside to go and ambush my neighbor, TheCoffinman. After about 3-5 minutes of running around and shooting at each other with airsoft rifles, we decided to stand in my yard and talk, while watching the sky. It's a half moon, maybe a little past, partly cloud sky. As we were talking, we both noticed a semi-bright light moving vertically up into the sky from the hill off in the distance.

As we watched the light, it gradually got brighter and brighter, until it looked like what I thought a flare might. Coffin said that it wasn't a flare, because the hillside wasn't lit up. We shared some ideas, and shot some others down as well.

A plane reflecting light off the sun? No. It's 9pm. The Sun is long gone. Reflecting from the moon? Then why aren't all the planes that bright? And wouldn't they be white, instead of yellow-orange?

A missile? No way. A helicopter? We'd have heard it. Why is it so bright? It's pulsing, too. Wow, it's going really high up there. Hey! There's an airplane flying by it! It can't be an airplane, because that one isn't lit up!

I mean, this thing looked like a streetlight in the sky. It was bright, and it was moving really slowly, up into the air. After about 8 minutes or so, it just hovered there for a minute, then it dimmed out to the point where it looked like a small blinking red light. There was no sound from this thing, at all. None!

As Coffin and I stared at it and shared more ideas, it started to slowly move toward our direction. After about 30 seconds, it turned, and headed South-Southwest. Then, it started to pick up some serious speed. It was faster than any airplane I had ever seen.

Eventually, it passed right by the Moon. Now, the Moon is so bright, stars, planes, etc that go near it all vanish for a moment. This moving object was clearly visible as it passed by the Moon. As it did pass by, we also started to hear what sounded like a jet engine. The kind a normal plane makes as you hear it flying through the sky.

It went way off in the distance, and into the clouds where we lost sight of it. We looked at each other, then back to where we last saw it. More ideas shared. About 2 minutes later, we saw through the trees, due West, a small, blinking red light moving due North. It was moving FAST. Same as the object we'd been watching.

Any ideas on what this may have been? Anyone have anything like this happen to them?

No pictures and no video are just gonna mean all you have said is bla bla bla bla .. sorry man. you should know better

[edit on 25-1-2010 by Lil Drummerboy]

i can vouch for him if that means anything... we didnt have a cam or nething, just our eyeballs. anyone else have a similar experience? i have seen ufo's before. two triangles but a mile above me and like 15 other people. dead silent, blacker than black but all you could see where the lighst at the points of each tip.. now this was much different but it stands out in my mind because of how bright this object got. ive never seen a plane do this before. we sit right in the middle of a "plane highway" if you will and we see planes constantly everyday and night. this just wasnt ur ordinary fly by. it was... well it was odd..

reply to post by TwilightMage


Well it is a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object), but it could be anything. Without pictures this is about as far as this one can go. For what it is worth though, I too saw something similar to that this summer, and I KNOW it was nothing mundane, just a thought.

Thanks for sharing...

[edit on 1/25/2010 by jkrog08]

Originally posted by Lil Drummerboy
No pictures and no video are just gonna mean all you have said is bla bla bla bla .. sorry man. you should know better

[edit on 25-1-2010 by Lil Drummerboy]

OK I have said this before on a many of the ufo " sightings". I live in a very remote area, and of which is in a pathway of an airport fly zone. I see lots of "weird things" often. Things I would say are not "typical" of an airplane. My wife and I often sit in the hot tub at night and watch the satellites , stars, meteors, and odd lights that just don't act like planes. I have even watched a "light" change direction. But like the fish story of the one that got away, it is hard to prove without concrete verification. But good luck to yous anyway

reply to post by TwilightMage


Sounds like a typical chinese lantern... "odd", "hovering", and "taking off at enormous speed" are usually what people say when they've seen one for the first time in real life (or sometimes if you're just not expecting it)... they can be quite deceiving since, distance/size/speed etc are easy to completely misjudge when you see an object in the sky like that.

[edit on 25-1-2010 by C.H.U.D.]

Anytime you see a fast moving light stop, hover, then change direction there is a good bet it is not anything mundane, it could be a optical illusion but it is doubtful to have those characteristics. Now what it is/was is a different story.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.



Yea but if the OP saw something similar to what I saw then I doubt it was that. When something is high in the sky, moving linear at high speed (much faster than any conventional airliner), then stops and completely changes direction achieving near instant acceleration I just do not think that can be explained by lanterns.

Originally posted by TheCoffinman
i can vouch for him if that means anything...

Yeah that means alot - you yahoos shooting each other with BB guns and vouching for one another

Ok - I am just kidding here - too bad about the camera ( not having one ) is this your first sighting?

I bet you guys will have cameras with you form now on.

Be careful, you could shoot an eye out.

Dorian Soran

reply to post by Lil Drummerboy


i dont believe the OP is looking to prove it was a UFO. simply asking questions... just putting the story out there for the good folk on ATS to speculate about.

@C.H.U.D.: Yea, what I saw was definitely NOT a lantern. It was moved faster than an airplane, and I'm sure lanterns don't do that.

@Dorian Soran: I'm definitely gonna have a camera, too.. Gonna keep one in my pocket whenever I go outside now, haha.

@TheCoffinman True. I can't prove something is something if I don't know what the something is... I'd like to know what exactly it IS, that I saw..

reply to post by TheCoffinman
well as I have said I have watched this type of thing often. I just don't ever say anything about it cause it wouldn't matter. and so I will say good luck to all on figuring out what it is. Maybe get youselves a good telescope, you would be surprised how quick some things can be explained. Yes if it is moving quickly it will be hard to track, but it would still be good to have on hand.



[edit on 25-1-2010 by Lil Drummerboy]

reply to post by jkrog08

When something is high in the sky

The trouble with that is that it's not possible to tell how high something is in the sky, when you have no idea what it is.

So, a 1 foot sky-lantern at 100 feet might seem as big as a city block size object at 10,000 feet, and a small movement up close, would seem like an enormous speed for an object a long distance away.

It is a typical optical illusion that can be seen whenever our brains have few visual cues to go on.

Phage posted this example:

post by Phage
While walking down to the beach one fine summer day I came upon a group of people looking up with their hands shading their eyes from the Sun and pointing at the sky. I looked up but couldn't see anything. As I got closer to them I could hear comments; "It's huge!", "Look how fast it's going!"

Really curious now, I asked what they were looking at. One of them said, "It's a UFO. Look, right there." I looked. I saw. A black toy balloon about 10" in diameter and maybe 100' in the air, drifting with the wind.

An object isolated in the sky, with no points of reference, can fool the eye. The observers had made the assumption that this was a very large object. Going from that assumption, because it looked so small, it must be very high in the sky. From there, its motion must be very fast instead of just drifting with the wind, the way balloons do. As a group, they had come to the wrong conclusion about what they were looking at. Their excited chatter feeding the illusion.

I said, "Um, I think it's a balloon." There was an immediate, "Yeah, right. Look how big it is." But then there were some abashed giggles as the observers' perspective changed. The group dispersed as the balloon passed under a cloud, making it obvious what was being seen.

moving linear at high speed (much faster than any conventional airliner)

Which s exactly what you might think if the objects size/distance had been mis-estimated.

[then stops and completely changes direction achieving near instant acceleration I just do not think that can be explained by lanterns.

They can catch all kind of eddies, and currents. The wind is never "perfect" and in one direction. Ive seen this very behaviour myself, and at the time, it took a good while to dawn on me.

Here's an idea TwilightMage/TheCoffinman...

Why not go and have a look (get some friends together) behind those trees and see what you can find?

[edit on 25-1-2010 by C.H.U.D.]

[edit on 25-1-2010 by C.H.U.D.]

reply to post by TwilightMage


I hate to be a broken record (I had to show my sisters kids what a record player, with LP's was, they never saw one) Oh F*** I feel so old. Lets take a brief look at the history of UFO sightings. I am a member of MUFON. Working with them and usiing my own methods, I came up with an unofficial protocol that I use to evaluate the validity of a UFO sighting. I am by nature very conservative. I accept nothing unless I am given or discover enough information that provides more or less detail on what I have then what is obvious. It's realy usefull to know three things when investigating a UFO. One, Do the local officials (ie:cops) have any vidieo, usually dash cam pics, that can give you anouther perspective of the event? Getting your hot little hands on police camera footage can be problamatic.

So, make them a deal. Put together a simple legal contract that states any info garnered on this investigation will credit the said police force with all rights to its discovery. No names need be mentioned, or should there be.

If your not out to make a buck, most likely people will have a greater tendancy to work with you. The second point is to do what may be very icky. You will have to go door to door and do what the police do; canvas the neighborhood. Make sure you don't make any official associatiations, and don't claim you work under the direction of Mufon unless you really do. If you really do they will back you up. If not, your toast. The whole point that creates a problem in UFO reporting is people make reports from a wild wide point of view. If you can use an old fassioned film camera, not an electronic one. Rumor has EL cameras are "frozen", and useless. So get an old camera that uses film. Keep an old fashioned mechanical watch on your wrist, or in your car or house.

It has been said "they" can freeze even mechanical time pieces. But I have no data to back that up. What I always have in my cars is an old film camera, binoculars, my cars GPS system, flares (usefull to get the attention of the cops and other drivers if things get a bit hairy), fire extingwisher, very comprehensive advanced first aid kit, and your all going to love this, a roll off aluminum foil. No I don't use the foil to make hats. Plow trucks in Minnesota are starting to be equiped with radar. I spread out a sheat of the foil, and I look bigger then a squadran of B-52's. No way in hell will they not see me. And if that doesen't work I can scream.

reply to post by TwilightMage


It was military, it's a new type of stealth bomber or something similar to that. Seen the same thing out here in AZ based on how you describe it, it's military and it's pretty freakin cool. The flash, the hovering and then the lights...

Originally posted by TwilightMage
@C.H.U.D.: Yea, what I saw was definitely NOT a lantern. It was moved faster than an airplane, and I'm sure lanterns don't do that.

@Dorian Soran: I'm definitely gonna have a camera, too.. Gonna keep one in my pocket whenever I go outside now, haha.

@TheCoffinman True. I can't prove something is something if I don't know what the something is... I'd like to know what exactly it IS, that I saw..

Based on your description, I don't see how it's possible for you to know how fast it moved. You can say how much of an angle it traveled through the sky, but the object's speed depends on its distance which you don't know, correct? So if the object is closer than you think, it may not be moving faster than an airplane.

If it was traveling faster than the speed of sound you'd hear a sonic boom and you didn't hear one of those right? And that's not much faster than an airplane's speed given the errors of estimating speeds and distances of unknown objects at night.

[edit on 26-1-2010 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by TwilightMage

Top one on the sighting you lucky human being. Sounds like a typical account of a ufo orb. They will tell you lanterns, gas, fire flies and geese, but when you see the real ufo orbs then you just cast aside these silly ideas. So the first was a yellow orange, then later you saw a red one too. That really adds to the sighting, reds are frequently seen after sightings of the amber/orange type, they are usually half the size of the amber/orange and carry a strange laser like search beam that they can scan the ground or the sky with.

A wonderful thing your first sighting of the ufo orbs. Life will never be the same again

reply to post by TwilightMage


Drummerboy is correct, if you can afford one, get a telescope, maybe one with night vision lens what not.

Report back here if you find anything interesting but be careful, you don't want to let them catch you. I here anal probes are painful.

Originally posted by C.H.U.D.
reply to post by TwilightMage

 

Sounds like a typical chinese lantern... "odd", "hovering", and "taking off at enormous speed"

ok. I dont care what country you are in, I dont care how tall you are, or how well the wind blows. Chinese lanterns do not now, nor have they ever, nor WILL they ever take off at enourmous speeds. Sorry, but stop and go motions, and taking off at enourmous speeds are not characteristic of the floating lanterns. Wow I love how that has become the swiss army knife of UFO explanation. Did the expiration date on swamp gas already come up?

[edit on 26-1-2010 by stanlee]

@jitombe: I dunno if you're being sarcastic about a new military stealth bomber, or not, but I hope so.. Because if the military decided to build a new stealth bomber that lights up enough to be seen at night by human eyes, then they've really failed.

@Arbitrageur: The sky had a lot of airplanes, like it usually does; 3-7 planes in each direction. When I want to tell how fast something is moving, I compare it to the other airplanes in the sky. This thing I saw had 2 airplanes pass right by it at roughly the same height, and passed a few more planes as it went across the sky. Not all planes move at the same height and speed, I know, which is why I tell speed relative to the planes at the same level, as best I can. And that's usually pretty darn good.

@C.H.U.D.: You're very right about the optical illusion our brain likes to make us see. BUT, there were plenty of things in the sky to compare this to. The radio tower with it's red light, the clouds, the airplanes, and the stars.

[edit on 26/1/2010 by TwilightMage]