Mysterious blinking star-like objects

reply to post by dudeguyman


Why a picture, are you incapable of going outside and looking up? I've just seen 2 and only been outside no more than 15minutes...

reply to post by dudeguyman


If it's night time where you are go outside and look around. I guarantee you'll see at least one of these.

Several people here in Southern California have been seeing these "blinking stars" for a few months, and these objects are now appearing in the SW sky almost nightly.

These lights don't have a recognizable flight pattern, and most of the time they hover, "blink off" and then reappear somewhere else in the vicinity. I have a buddy from the US Army and he says they could be a kind of military drone, but I don't know of any military craft that disappears and reappears like this does.

It seems to be appearing quite frequently around here in the L.A. suburbs, as I've seen it on more than 10 different nights, always around 10pm local time. It usually appears as the brightest object in the night sky besides the moon.

Looks like the flasher is BACK!

About this time last year I first spotted this it would always appear in the constellation of Cassiopeia photography-on-the.net...

Several amateur astronomers like myself and others have been trying to figure out what this is. stargazerslounge.com...

Would love to find out anymore about this myself.

This thread is from 2008
www.abovetopsecret.com...


I have been a backyard astronomer since I was very young and I had never seen anything like it till 2008

I have only seen it at twilight and I haven’t seen it since the winter of 2008 – I assumed it was something reflecting the sunlight but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was something else

I will add its not stars twinkling and I don’t think it’s a satellite (well not a normal one)

Edit to add
I have been looking for this again this year – thinking it might be something to do with the time of year and I haven’t seen anything so far this month

Oh and so you know using several different satellite tracking software programs I had eliminated any known satellites…

Originally posted by lukeUK
reply to post by dudeguyman

 

Why a picture, are you incapable of going outside and looking up? I've just seen 2 and only been outside no more than 15minutes...

Hate to jump the gun here, but literally came back in after seeing one just now (8:15pm). Observed about 10 flashes going from north to south in a small patch of the sky.I was looking at this general area: www.fourmilab.ch...

As for capturing a picture that someone requested, it would be rather hard to do so. Firstly i don't have a good enough camera to photograph stars or satellites (about the same brightness), its also hard to judge when these things blink on/off, seems to have no obvious delay between flashes.

reply to post by InsideYourMind


Does it look something like this?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by InsideYourMind


Actually if you have a camera with a long exposure time you can capture it or know someone with one. I have done it before. Then we can track or determine its orbit!

Originally posted by 11I11
Seen that very thing in the UK on Monday eveing around 8pm. The little guy was blinkering like crazy!

I am in the UK, this is outside RIGHT NOW, its north-east i believe, its flashing blue, green, white, yellow and red, my daughter and I have just been watching it, and she reckons its moving back and fore like a pendulum, i know this sounds bizarre but i thinks shes right. What on earth is it?

My vote is for Iridium satellite flare/glint. The sun has been very active as of late. And today in the news we hear about another satellite that has been dead since 98 entering earth. A CME can knock satellites around a bit, especially non powered ones. UARS was tumbling all over before it reached the end. I'm sure it was responsible for at least some flashes of light seen from earth last week.

There are currently 8000 satellites in space. About 550 them are actually operational satellites, and the rest are dead satellites, or pieces of space debris.

reply to post by thedoctorswife


Can you post some video or some pics?

2nd.

Wow ok now I'm a little freaked out, I always have a tendency to look up at the stars late at night, and I'll always catch a flash for just a brief second, but then think No that was just a star as I moved my eyes, but if other people are seeing the same flashes that's just crazy. Now I can tell my wife that I'm not just dreaming this up. I'm being dead serious about this too. Just wow, and I know what Iriduim satellite flashes look like. But this happens way to late at night for a reflective flash off a solar panel. Creepy

Someone get some Video!!! LOL

reply to post by thedoctorswife


Amazing that people are seeing this everywhere! I wonder what it is. I got a video that I will upload tonight after I get off work. Granted its pretty crappy quality due to the fact that my camera sucks, but you can see the flashing and the movement of it.

reply to post by InsideYourMind


The thing is that most UFOs look like lights literally flying through the sky, it is so hard to know what is in the bright light. I guess it was easier back in the day when when UFO did things that were impossible for any flying objects.

I usually don't post on threads like these, but I saw a strangely flashing star with the girlfriend the other day, north east of jupiter (which was in the east). It turned out to be Capella, but the way it was blinking was odd. Not sure if that's what anyone else noticed.

This is slightly tangential to the blinking star query but in a similar ballpark. For much of September I was captivated by the sight of Jupiter, which from around the night of the 8th (when I first noticed it), looked bigger than I ever remember seeing it. (We also had some truly spectacular clear nights here in hertfordshire, in which you could easily make out the colours of stars, red, blue, green, orange, purple, you name it, it was jaw-dropping).

Anyway, after a week or so of going into raptures over how amazing Jupiter looked I decided to try to photograph it, because it was very close to the moon and so doubly pretty. I have a fairly ordinary Lumix camera with a Lecia lens that zooms in x12, and I proceeded to take a series of pictures that were notably primarily because I just couldn't get Jupiter in focus. Obviously my hand kept wobbling and although the planet came out extremely bright - brighter than the moon - it was all over the place and I basically photographed a series of fluorescent looking squiggles next to an iridescent egg-shaped moon.

When I went through the photos later I spent a while making hieroglyphs and letters out of the squiggly jupiter, but a few shots into the series I saw one that made me feel quite proud. To the above right of the moon was a perfectly round planet that looked huge in size and was evidently - unlike all the others - completely in focus. I was really pleased at having managed this and although I questioned the fact that on this particular photo - unlike all the others - 'Jupiter' was grey-black, apparently in shadow, rather than dazzling white light, I didn't think too much of it. I was just glad I'd got one in focus.

Last night, however, one thing and another got me to think about this photo yet again. I'd gone back to look at it several times but always drew the same conclusion that it was simply a brilliantly in-focus shot of the moon and jupiter. I realised last night, however, that it almost definitely could NOT have been Jupiter, for the simple reason that it was grey, round and shadowed rather than a brilliant light, and at least 3 times the size of Jupiter in the other pics. When I studied the photo again it also dawned on me for the first time that not only was it a different looking in terms of brightness - or lack of - it was also about half the distance from the moon compared with Jupiter on the other shots.

When I zoom in on this thing it looks like a crazy planet or some kind of mothership, it is surreal. I showed it to two camera buffs and they also found it strange, we don't think it's lens flare or dust as the rest of the image is totally lucid, no orbs or anything like that. We don't think it can be a lens flare as it's perfectly round with clearly defined edges (not blurred) and these weird pock-marks on the surface. Plus it's not glowing in any way. I"m going to upload it below along with a comparison of Jupiter so you can see what I mean. If they don't come out hi res enough for you to see I'm happy to email them onto people who want to look for themselves.

The first picture here is the least squiggly one of jupiter so you can compare.


www3.picturepush.com...

www2.picturepush.com...

Originally posted by Glassbender777
Wow ok now I'm a little freaked out, I always have a tendency to look up at the stars late at night, and I'll always catch a flash for just a brief second, but then think No that was just a star as I moved my eyes, but if other people are seeing the same flashes that's just crazy. Now I can tell my wife that I'm not just dreaming this up. I'm being dead serious about this too. Just wow, and I know what Iriduim satellite flashes look like. But this happens way to late at night for a reflective flash off a solar panel. Creepy

edit on 28-9-2011 by Glassbender777 because: (no reason given)

Yes, i have also noticed them more often when the "object" would have been in earth's shadow, which doesn't really look like an iridium flare anyway. Besides that doesn't seem to explain the erratic movement (usually jumpy, zigzag motions).

I realize the odd flash, as a one-off single point of light that doesn't seem to be repeating/moving about is most probably a very small meteorite (you can sometimes see a single flash of light without a tail). Its odd though, because when this thing happens again and again in the same part of the sky, its almost like its leaving a dot-to-dot puzzle as it moves slowly. It also seems pretty hard to match the dots up where the object/thing flashed because they don't seem to move in a perfectly straight line . The one thing i'm sure about its not a rapid succession of tiny meteorites in one patch of the sky.

Its definitely something moving about.

reply to post by charlottecowell


Great photos, although a wee bit on the tiny side.