I just saw a UFO with flames coming out the back.

reply to post by yourmamaknows


It's the first sighting of anything wierd i've had in years, I regularly come here, been 4 years on this site maybe and i've never posted bogus stories before.

So believe what you want, i'm more than happy for seeing something so bizarre and (to me) unexplainable. (So far).

reply to post by Chukkles


and it didnt look like any of the meteors in this video?

www.youtube.com...

reply to post by youallcrazy


Yes it looked exactly like some of those.
It's just in England we don't get big meteor's, and this must have been a pretty big one, it must have burned up in the atmosphere but it just looked so low.

Glad to have seen one, I will most likely never see it again in England.

Originally posted by Chukkles
reply to post by youallcrazy

 

Glad to have seen one, I will most likely never see it again in England.

The weather can be a pain, but if you want to, you can see meteors on any clear night here in England. Of course it helps if you can get away from man made light pollution, as you'll see meteors you'd otherwise miss. It also helps if you combine that with the peak nights of the major meteor showers. I'd recommend the Perseids (August), Geminids (December), and this year you are in the right place to observe a rare Draconid outburst the like of which has not been seen for a decade, when the Leonids were in "storm mode".

It's possible to see many bright meteors during the peak of a major meteor shower even here in England, as I found out when most were tucked up in bed on a November night back in 1998, a few hours before the expected Leonid meteor shower peak that year (before the boffins got good at predicting meteor shower outbursts). That year I spent the whole night watching Leonids streak across the sky, mostly bright fireballs, and some bright enough to light up the roof tops like it was almost daylight.

Ever since then I've been observing meteor showers from here in England, and sometimes the weather gets the better of me, but if you keep trying, you get rewarded... the trick is to be patient and wait for the inevitable....100s of tones of extraterrestrial material "burn up" (or "ablate") in our atmosphere every day.

This FAQ should answer any questions you may have on the subject. The answers to many other questions can be found here on ATS if you search my previous posts.

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


Oh i've seen shooting stars but this thing I saw the other night was so much closer and bigger than any meteor i've ever seen.

Think of a giant spotlight in the sky with a flaming tail that suddenly burns up into nothing, I saaw this clear as day.
That is what we won't see in England very often at all.

Check the vid Youallcrazy posted, that shows exactly what I saw.

Awesome! My wife and I saw that big meteor coming down near Sacramento years ago like the one posted. Pretty neat!

So case solved! Sorta?

reply to post by Chukkles


I've posted that same compilation that Youallcrazy posted here on ATS many times before. What you saw was just a slightly larger than normal meteor from the sound of your description. You certainly don't see meteors like the one you saw every time, but they are not all that rare either.

It's actually a quite common feature of meteors that they can seem closer than "normal", especially when they are bright and close to the horizon. That's just an optical illusion though, since your brain interprets bright lights as being close, and objects that are low on the horizon as being at low altitude (but earth is curved, so a distant object can be very low on the horizon very easily - ever see the sun setting below the horizon with a clear/low horizon like the sea?).

Astronomers have been aware of the optical illusion for more than a century.

Having read hundreds and hundreds of reports of bright meteors over the years, and researched the subject, I've come across many examples similar to yours. I've also seen the same effects you describe myself - that and lots more.

All I'm saying is look, and you will see more "strangeness" from meteors. Don't take my word for it though - go out and spend a few nights a year under the stars, observing from a location with good all round views of the sky, and using proper meteor observing technique (laying flat on a sun lounger/camp bed and looking more or less straight up), and you can see more.

Picking the right nights to observe is important though, if you want to increase your chances of seeing a memorable meteor. More meteors = more chance of seeing an extraordinary meteor/s + a constant stream of smaller "shooting stars" makes it more interesting than looking on non-peak nights where you usually have to wait for a long time between meteors, and they are mostly faint.