Ufo over melbourne

Ive seen the odd u.f.o around but never this early and this clear at night, im lucky im not the only one who seen it, it was DEFINITELY not a plane or satellite or anything explainable, i did not get a chance to take pictures or video, it was incredible. did anyone else in the Melbourne area see the bright fast moving u.f.o flying west to north east at around 9:50 AEST pm then vanish. Someone other then me had to be looking at the sky tonight!!!

reply to post by camouflaged

it was DEFINITELY not a plane or satellite or anything explainable

ISS Sighting opportunity for Melbourne

Sat Jan 28/09:47 PM .... APPROACH , 34 above WSW ...... DEPARTURE , 24 above NNE
spaceflight1.nasa.gov...

camouflaged
It always helps when witnesses post accurate details like time and direction of travel

reply to post by gortex


Nice one! fast too!

I always miss the ISS.... I really need an email alert for it.... maybe I'll get lucky tomorrow night!

Originally posted by gortex
reply to post by camouflaged

 

it was DEFINITELY not a plane or satellite or anything explainable

ISS Sighting opportunity for Melbourne

Sat Jan 28/09:47 PM .... APPROACH , 34 above WSW ...... DEPARTURE , 24 above NNE
spaceflight1.nasa.gov...®ion=Victoria&city=Melbourne

camouflaged
It always helps when witnesses post accurate details like time and direction of travel

edit on 28-1-2012 by gortex because: Edit to add

That was super quick, thanks for taking the time to help ease my mind... im fairly new to star gazing and have definitely seen a UFO, and satellites also so i can differentiate between the two... some things i see i cant explain, Ive never actually witnessed a satellite that bright and fast moving and so close in our atmosphere before so first thing that came to my mind was a u.f.o and until you posted a reply that's exactly what it was to me.

reply to post by camouflaged


What colour was the light(s)? I've been noticing single orange lighted UFOs over Adelaide between 3-5am over the past couple of weeks which i can confirm were not domestic planes as i have tracked their flight paths as well as well as airport locations.

reply to post by camouflaged

Ive never actually witnessed a satellite that bright and fast moving and so close in our atmosphere before so first thing that came to my mind was a u.f.o

I know how it feels mate , several years ago I saw a large ball of light that traveled across the sky and I came to the same conclusion ,not a satellite , plane or meteor so to me it was a UFO ...the sighting made my heart pound
Then I discovered it was the ISS .... still cool though

Originally posted by gortex
It always helps when witnesses post accurate details like time and direction of travel

How long the sighting lasted would also be useful, and if possible the positions of the start and end of the objects path in relation to celestial objects (or altitude/compass bearing in degrees)

Originally posted by camouflaged
Ive seen the odd u.f.o around but never this early and this clear at night, im lucky im not the only one who seen it, it was DEFINITELY not a plane or satellite or anything explainable, i did not get a chance to take pictures or video, it was incredible. did anyone else in the Melbourne area see the bright fast moving u.f.o flying west to north east at around 9:50 AEST pm then vanish. Someone other then me had to be looking at the sky tonight!!!

There are tools you can use to either confirm or eliminate a planet/start or salleite...

go HERE for the links...

Originally posted by camouflaged
Ive never actually witnessed a satellite that bright and fast moving and so close in our atmosphere before so first thing that came to my mind was a u.f.o

This is why in many UFO cases, where the witness claimed that the UFO was "too close" to be a celestial object, their testimony must be treated with a healthy degree of skepticism - our brains interpret something bright as being close, which is not necessarily the case as you found out.

I hope you don't mind if I use your example for future reference, and to try and prevent others from making the same mistake.

Originally posted by C.H.U.D.

Originally posted by camouflaged
Ive never actually witnessed a satellite that bright and fast moving and so close in our atmosphere before so first thing that came to my mind was a u.f.o

This is why in many UFO cases, where the witness claimed that the UFO was "too close" to be a celestial object, their testimony must be treated with a healthy degree of skepticism - our brains interpret something bright as being close, which is not necessarily the case as you found out.

I hope you don't mind if I use your example for future reference, and to try and prevent others from making the same mistake.

And this is why all witness testimony has to be taken with a grain of salt. enormous amounts of research out there stating witness testimony that does not corroborate evidence is flawed at best....

Not only do people just lie (though not the case HERE)....but people are forgetful....people misinterpret things....people get confused....people want a good story so they develop their testimony based on the story they want to present or based on questions asked.....and the list goes on.....

people are always very skeptical of the government....but hardly ever of complete strangers.....that always boggles my mind....

Originally posted by BeforeTheHangmansNoose
reply to post by camouflaged

 

What colour was the light(s)? I've been noticing single orange lighted UFOs over Adelaide between 3-5am over the past couple of weeks which i can confirm were not domestic planes as i have tracked their flight paths as well as well as airport locations.

Thanks for the reply, it was only a singular bright white/yellow light.... their was no flashing it was low orbiting, have you tried to record your experience with video or pictures? id be interested in seeing what you've seen.

Originally posted by C.H.U.D.

Originally posted by gortex
It always helps when witnesses post accurate details like time and direction of travel

How long the sighting lasted would also be useful, and if possible the positions of the start and end of the objects path in relation to celestial objects (or altitude/compass bearing in degrees)

Sorry i should of mentioned the duration also, it was quick moving and lasted not even a minute. maybe around the 40 second mark. im only new to this so im not o sure what you mean by the objects path in relation to celestrial object's, do you mean what planets it was closest to at the time i seen it?

Originally posted by greeneyedleo

Originally posted by camouflaged
Ive seen the odd u.f.o around but never this early and this clear at night, im lucky im not the only one who seen it, it was DEFINITELY not a plane or satellite or anything explainable, i did not get a chance to take pictures or video, it was incredible. did anyone else in the Melbourne area see the bright fast moving u.f.o flying west to north east at around 9:50 AEST pm then vanish. Someone other then me had to be looking at the sky tonight!!!

There are tools you can use to either confirm or eliminate a planet/start or salleite...

go HERE for the links...

Thanks for the link, Ive seen the topic around the board and was going to post my last experience but i lost my post and it was really long so i kind of just gave up. the tools posted look very useful and will be perfect to look at when/if i experience something weird in the sky's again.

Originally posted by C.H.U.D.

Originally posted by camouflaged
Ive never actually witnessed a satellite that bright and fast moving and so close in our atmosphere before so first thing that came to my mind was a u.f.o

This is why in many UFO cases, where the witness claimed that the UFO was "too close" to be a celestial object, their testimony must be treated with a healthy degree of skepticism - our brains interpret something bright as being close, which is not necessarily the case as you found out.

I hope you don't mind if I use your example for future reference, and to try and prevent others from making the same mistake.

I don't mind if you use what i said as an example, i guess its like the sun, it appears small if it wasn't lit up, but because of its brightness it appears closer.

Originally posted by camouflaged

Originally posted by BeforeTheHangmansNoose
reply to post by camouflaged

 

What colour was the light(s)? I've been noticing single orange lighted UFOs over Adelaide between 3-5am over the past couple of weeks which i can confirm were not domestic planes as i have tracked their flight paths as well as well as airport locations.

Thanks for the reply, it was only a singular bright white/yellow light.... their was no flashing it was low orbiting, have you tried to record your experience with video or pictures? id be interested in seeing what you've seen.

I don't really have any decent recording equipment, i will give it a shot next time I see it, but quite often, i myself only barely see it as it's pretty far away.

Also thought i might add, that every time i have seen these orange lights. no more then 15 minutes later, a domestic plane with 3 yellow lights in the shape of a triangle, and a flashing red light, appears from one of the minor airports and always go to the same location i saw the initial orange light. They are more likely government aircrafts as they are relatively close but almost silent.

My opinion is that, if these orange lights are in fact, a UFO, aka, a non-government/non-domestic craft, that the government has sent it's own crafts to investigate. The first time i saw a the orange light, 10 minutes later two crafts (as i explained above) took flight in the same direction closely following each other. Strange indeed.

Originally posted by camouflaged
Sorry i should of mentioned the duration also, it was quick moving and lasted not even a minute. maybe around the 40 second mark.

No problem. It's easy to miss the odd detail here and there when the adrenalin is flowing.

That time frame fits with an ISS/satellite sighting, so I think that pretty much confirms what you saw was the ISS.

Originally posted by camouflaged
im only new to this so im not o sure what you mean by the objects path in relation to celestrial object's, do you mean what planets it was closest to at the time i seen it?

Again, not a problem. A novice would not be expected to know how to accurately describe the path an object appeared to take in the sky. It is quite simple to do though, and can be a great help when trying to identify an unknown object in the sky.

There are basically two ways of doing it:

1/ You only need two numbers to describe a the position of an object in the sky. The first is the direction, with North being 0 degrees, and South being 180 degrees. West would be 270 degrees and so on.

The second number describes the altitude in the sky. 0 degrees would be an object on the horizon (it would have to be at sea or on a very immense and flat plain, because those are the only paces where the true horizon can actually be seen).

An object directly above your head would be at 90 degrees, so numbers between 0-90 degrees are all valid
for the altitude.

If you stretch out your arm and make a fist, holding it as if you were going to give a "thumbs up", from the top of the fist to the bottom of the fist is roughly 5 degrees, so can use it to estimate distance in degrees in the sky.

2/ Learn your way around the stars/planets and the constellations if you want to take it a step further, which is what I was referring to when I said "celestial objects". It's not that hard to learn the stars with the help of planetarium software like the freely available Stellarium.

Originally posted by camouflaged
I don't mind if you use what i said as an example, i guess its like the sun, it appears small if it wasn't lit up, but because of its brightness it appears closer.

Thanks. The sun is not a bad example - it does look deceptively close when it's quite a long way away (about 147 million km away), but it's also massive, so its about 0.5 degrees across, which is large compared to the majority of celestial objects, apart from the moon of course which rivals it for size.

The extreme brightness of the sun, likely has a lot to do with how close it looks too. I made a thread on the subject of estimating distance of UFOs last December, which goes into some detail about how our brains interpret bright objects.

It's not a simple subject, but basically out brain makes assumptions based on how we as humans have evolved to see things on the ground. Eg a car head light that is big and bright is lightly to be very close to you - your brain interpenetrating things as being big and bright when they are close has obvious survival implications for our species, but although it works well on the ground, the assumptions the brain makes for unknownobjects seen in the sky, where there are usually few if any cues to help our brains work out distance, the assumptions fall apart.

It's under these conditions (unfamiliar objects and lack of distance cues), when we are prone to optical illusions, and that is what is happening when you see something big and bright appearing to be closer than it actually is.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a celestial object, but more often than not it is, since it's not uncommon for people to take for granted how bright celestial objects can sometimes appear to be. Meteors are a great example, and the reason I'm personally interested in this subject. Bright meteors are surprisingly common, and often misidentified as UFOs for the same reason (there are other factors that can also contribute to this) in my experience.

The ISS for example has an apparent magnitude (brightness) of around -3.5 (or a little more), but some satellites (Iridiums for example) can suddenly brighten to -9 magnitude which is hundreds/thousands of times brighter than what you saw. Close to the brightness of the moon. Meteors can be hundreds/thousands of times brighter again - brighter than the sun in some cases, although that is fairly rare (perhaps once a year somewhere on earth).