Starlike object zig-zagging in the night sky

reply to post by artnut

If your object was as high up as the one I saw, there is no way it was man made in any way.

Unless it was a satellite , they can orbit as far as 22,000 miles away .

reply to post by TellEmRye


on 25/08/13 I seen something similar, I gazed at it for a while, thinking it was my eyes that were playing a trick, if you look at a star for a few minutes it seems like it is moving around, but taking more interest in this particular star like you describe moving darting to and fro, I got my camera and took a clip of the thing, I then went to my laptop and played it back, slowing it and zooming in on it, and sure enough it did change colour, green, blue, a beautiful orange gold colour too, and also yellow and red, but to be honest I did not post it anywhere, or even mention it to anyone apart from here now, because to me it does look like a star even with blowing it up a bit and slowing it, apart from that it is not any use for evidence of anything odd, my conclusion is that it was a star... so I have nothing to add for you here, except to relate this similar sort of sighting... to add I have seen meteors, going to and fro, the iss, and some kind of ball near the sun, other than that I can't say I've seen anything that looked metallic with observation bays, although I keep hoping.. thanks for sharing

reply to post by markymint


Any chance of you replying to my reply? Or are you just happy to slag me off then walk away?

I'm quite patient and can wait a long time but I will keep asking from time to time just to keep this request alive.

I see fake stars and fake planes every day. You are not alone.

I'm watching the same thing now me and my partner are and I've tried to video it on my iPad but can't it won't even pick it up

originally posted by: TellEmRye
Hello people, I want to know my fellow ATS'ers opinions on what I have witnessed tonight.

We all gaze up at the sky at night right? Whenever I'm chilling outdoors I love watching the night sky, but tonight I saw something very bizarre with a friend. He pointed out a star was moving very so slightly about on the spot, I looked up & noticed it straight away! It looked like a star, & it was moving down, right, left, zig zagging quickly & making circular motions. At this point, I can't believe what I'm seeing, neither can my friend who's shouting & not accepting what he's seeing in a almost blind ignorant rage. This was taking place at roughly midnight until 1am, and although it wasn't leaving the area of the sky it was in, but it constantly dancing around on the spot.

After 45 minutes I've tried everything to disprove what I'm seeing, looking at other stars to see if they look like they're moving but nope, only the one we noticed which proves we was not seeing things. It also occasionally seem to flash blue & green lights, and change its shape slightly.

After the hour, it began to move right across the sky heading west I believe. After a while vanished altogether.

May be worth pointing out I live in London, and it was a clear night sky. If anyone has seen any similar or has an explanation please let me know, thanks for reading.

I recently asked my dad if he remembers the moment when I was a kid and we walked together with group of people at night on the road from the beach. I told him what I remembered, but he would not recall. I thought for a second, how it is possible to forget something like this.
While walking up hill road near the sea with group of people, I suddenly heard alarmed voices in that group and some pointing fingers up the night sky. Somebody shook my sholder , hugged in a way to hold me still so I could aim for what everyone was pointing up at. I finally have caught a scene where a star, in luminosity not much different from the rest of stars, but rapidly moving in zig zag with overall concrete direction. I thought for a second that one star bouncing off another to get moving. That seemed funny to me although I somehow new I am witnessing unusual event.

Nice read




cheers)

a reply to: TellEmRye

I believe you. I want out tonight with 2 friends and a child to watch the Perseids meteor shower. All 4 of us saw a star that was moving around in a small area. It moved up, down, side to side, in the shape of a triangle and in zigzags. It was like it was dancing. It didn't move closer or further and it didn't move across the sky. It would stop and then move again. We watched for 45 minutes and even forgot about the meteor shower. A military operation of some sort was the only earthly reason we could come up with. Satellites don't move like this thing. In fact I've never seen anything like it in my 39 years of life. Even with a logical explanation like it being military, none of us really believe that's what it was. It wasn't a reflection of any kind as the sky was cloudless and hazeless tonight here in Aurora Colorado between 1 and 2 a.m. Skeptics and non believers can come up with all the rational excuses they can think of. All 4 of us know what we saw had nothing to do with humans. Don't let them make you doubt yourself or make you believe you're crazy. I've been researching this for a half hour now and I've read admissions from all over the world that have seen the same thing with no variation. There's no way that many people have described the same situation for it to not be real.

This is very interesting. I would have to agree with you on exactly how you described its movements.
I am on Vancouver Island, in Canada, and last night between 10:30-11pm, I was laying in bed looking out my window. The sky was clear and I could see some stars, so I opened my curtains to gaze out my window. I had my head on my pilllow (not moving) when I noticed a bright star below Orion's Belt, moving, left, then up, then right, zig zag or in spiral motions. Very odd I thought. I pointed it out to my husband. And sure enough we were calling out directions as it was moving, at the same time.
If that wasn't odd enough, we looked at the whole Orion's constellation and surrounding stars. It appeared as if there were four points directly around Orion's Belt, and it looked as though they were blinking as in a way of communication with one another.

Each point (think of a diamond with Orion's Belt in the middle) so each point would take turns, if you will, being the brightest, and moving in the weird "flight patterns". Meanwhile the three stars 'Orion's belt' were only moving in small spiral motions and blinking in order left to right and right to left.

We sat and watched for 2 hours. And yes I know some will say "well why didn't you get it on video or camera" I don't have one strong enough to pick up these images... it would look like a whole lot of black. Anyway, I got on google to see if anyone else had seen 'moving stars' and found that I wasn't alone. Someone said that it could be debunked by us having micro tremors in our eyes and since it's a black canvas our eyes/brains tell us they are moving....... ok fair enough. But how does that explain my husband and I calling out their direction at the same time? I doubt we have matching micro tremors in ours eyes. But maybe? Unlikely. I don't know how often people see these comments, but I will be going to watch the stars tonight and will be jotting down some sketches and patterns that I notice. Perhaps you could take a look at Orion from where you are, see what you notice.

a reply to: MiChaLu

It's called the autokinetic effect which is a type of illusion. It tends to occur when a point light source is more or less on it's own, which means there are no nearby points of reference for us to judge is something is still or moving. Photographing it will only prove the movement is an illusion, since illusions can't be photographed.

You can photograph it easily using an old/cheap DSLR like a Canon EOS 20D with 50mm f1.8 (find an old manual lens like a Nikon ais or Pentax and use the appropriate lens mount converter - auto focus will be useless, and modern cheap lenses don't have a way to manual focus) lens mounted on a tripod (~$150 USD or less if you buy used). You'll also need a cable release (get one with a "running shutter lock" ~$5 USD from a Chinese seller on ebay). Set the DSLR to M (manual mode), ISO to 800, lens to 1.8 + near infinity focus on the distance scale and find a bright star, then refine focus by taking 10-15 second exposures, and zooming in on the lcd to get the star as point like as possible. It's impossible to get focus exactly perfect like this (better/faster to use a laptop or PC if you can, and compare exposures side by side @ 100% zoom), but it should be good enough.

The same effect also occurs with moving lights like satellites, which is what the OP was probably referring to with his/her post. The only difference is that because the object/light is already moving, the object will appear to trace out a "sine wave" (AKA "zig-zag") path. I've observed the ISS do this, as well as other satellites on occasion. Obviously satellites can't actually zig-zag, and if you try to photograph a satellite appearing to do this with a long exposure as described above, and review the image, then you will find the satellite has traced a straight path in the sky, which proves that this is an illusion.

In my experience, it usually only happens when I'm tired. It can even be replicated indoors. For example, I recently noticed a small black mark on a large expanse of white/featureless ceiling. After looking at it for a while it appeared to start moving. I thought it was an insect or spider! After closer inspection, it was obvious it was just a mark on the ceiling.

I did post a thread on the subject some years back. Unfortunately the pics have since disappeared:
Flashes and Star-like objects that move strangely in the sky explained


Edit to add: Re the "micro tremors in our eyes" - That was a theory. I'm not sure it has been fully explained why we see like this. We are still learning about how our brains interact with our eyes. Despite us not knowing why it happens for sure, it can relatively easily be proven that it is our senses playing tricks on us with a simple camera setup as described above. Give it a go! On top of this, astrophotographers prove every night, that stars are stationary relative to each other (excepting over great lengths of time), and that the ISS/other satellites don't zig-zag!

a reply to: ObservingYou

Same here. I saw it around 3am once doing same as OP said. Id say it was crazy but at the time i was hearing demons through the v2k system.

a reply to:
[post=23238163]FireballS
I understand your arguments and I would usually give in about an explanation like that, but I know what I was seeing. I might not be able to explain it right now, but both my husband and I were calling out directions at the same time as they were moving. And it wasn't just one star moving. There were 7 at first and then in the end there were a total of 9 that were moving. We both looked in another direction, and at other stars and constellations, and no movement. Idk seems exciting and interesting to me. Does auto kinetic effect affect people the same way in which the light would move? Same line zig zag ways... I'm just curious if it's possible for my husband and I to have seen the exact same thing.

Maybe the Chinese are trying to reposition or burn up fuel in that space station that is supposed to be falling to earth shortly. They may still be trying to save it or move it's path to areas that are less populated. The thing is supposed to come down pretty soon, maybe they are giving it a final try.

originally posted by: MiChaLu
I understand your arguments and I would usually give in about an explanation like that, but I know what I was seeing.

That is the trouble with people. They think they know what they are seeing but don't understand the principals behind how our vision works. If you don't understand how something works, how can you be sure what you are seeing?

For example, the lens of a human eye projects an inverted (upside down) image on the retina, but we see everything the right way up. We should see everything the wrong way up, but our brains step in, process that data, turn the image the way it should be, and we see everything the right way up.

It's the same for all aspects of vision. We capture an image via our eyes, but this is not what we see. That image is sent to the brain via the optic nerve where it is processed (you could say "photoshopped") in a way our brain thinks is appropriate, and that is what we then see. Would you trust an image that you know has been "photoshopped"? Photoshopped images are the bane of the community here, yet they are accepted without question when they come from a person rather than a software application.

The trouble is that the processing choices our brain makes are not always appropriate depending on the situation. In certain situations our brains make the wrong choice, and what our brain is telling us is the case (what we "see") may not always be the case. This often occurs when our brains are receiving contradictory information or in situations that we are unfamiliar with. We evolved as daytime creatures, so for our brains, the night presents challenges, although we may not be consciously aware of this.

Illusions are the manifestation of this flaw.

If you click on the links below, what do you see?

Green Zigzags Spin Illusion
Another spinning illusion

They are both static images, but they appear to move! This proves that we can be fooled into seeing apparent motion where there is none, and that "I know what I saw" is not a valid argument.

Here are a couple more illusions that show how easily our eyes (or "brains" I should say) are fooled, although they do not involve apparent motion:

Checker shadow illusion

originally posted by: MiChaLu
Does auto kinetic effect affect people the same way in which the light would move? Same line zig zag ways... I'm just curious if it's possible for my husband and I to have seen the exact same thing.

Since both you and your husband were observing under the same conditions, then it would make sense that both your brains were interpreting what you were seeing in the same way. That would suggest that "micro eye movements" are not the cause, and that the theory is wrong. It would seem that in this case, the flaw is purely software (processing) and not hardware (eye muscles).

originally posted by: rickymouse
Maybe the Chinese are trying to reposition or burn up fuel in that space station that is supposed to be falling to earth shortly. They may still be trying to save it or move it's path to areas that are less populated. The thing is supposed to come down pretty soon, maybe they are giving it a final try.

If that is the case, then how do you explain that, when photographed, the trail in the image is a straight line? Also, why move it one way, and then the exact opposite way if you are trying to change the orbit to a less risky one? That would result in no overall change in orbit!

This graph suggests that they have been trying to keep it up there for as long as possible. Why waste it by effectively "going round in circles"?

Source: aerospace.org

Why is almost everyone here so keen to find another reason, when we already have one which explains every aspect of what people are seeing?

It seems to me that people do not want to accept that there is a rational explanation, because that means they would have to admit that what they thought they saw, may not have been what actually happened. It follows from that, that we can't trust witness reports relating to UFOs, and since most of "UFOology" is based on "I saw this" or "I saw that", then where does that leave "UFOology"? It leaves it at zero evidence for anything "strange" being the cause, and "+1" for UFOs are explained by people don't make good witnesses.

Now, if you've invested so much time/effort in supporting the case for there being something strange going on, the above is going to be a pretty bitter pill to swallow is it not? Much easier to brush off the fact that we don't make good witnesses, and carry on as if there is nothing amiss.. which is why the "study" of UFOs in places like this never makes any real progress.

"UFOology" (as found in places like this) is more like a religion than a science. Belief is more important than facts and evidence. Hardly surprising that people fall for the hype. Human kind has a history of blindly following. It seems that our brains are wired that way.

It does not have to be that way though. Everyone (well most anyway I suspect) has the capacity to educate themselves, and in a case like this one, it can easily be shown that what we are seeing is not what is actually happening. Talk is cheap. Try it and see for yourself. I have. If you are *that* interested in the subject, why wouldn't you? Do you not want to know? The only reason I can think is that you don't want to find "the truth" because that will cause you to question your dearly held beliefs!!!!!!

a reply to: FireballStorm

I saw the US's first space station zigzagging through the sky before it didn't come back anymore. They were burning up the excess fuel it contained. They may be doing this with the China space station, but are running it in circles. They like to burn up the fuel if they can I guess. Maybe they have some control over this.

This is just a possible explanation to what you are seeing, I do not know if it is relevant though. I just know that this is shortly coming down. It is actually normally stationary, the streak is a timelapse is created by The earth is turning, the Chinese space station is not moving I believe.

Thank you for your reply ricky.

originally posted by: rickymouse
a reply to: FireballStorm

I saw the US's first space station zigzagging through the sky before it didn't come back anymore. They were burning up the excess fuel it contained.

Did you read this somewhere? Have you got a source, or is it just an assumption you made because you saw it *apparently* zig-zagging?

originally posted by: rickymouse
a reply to: FireballStorm
They may be doing this with the China space station, but are running it in circles. They like to burn up the fuel if they can I guess. Maybe they have some control over this.

Has the object that looked like it was zig-zagging been positively identified as Tiangong-1? which post were you referring to, that mentions it?

I can see why you might think they are trying to burn up excess fuel, but if it is indeed the case that they do have excess fuel, then why not A/use that fuel to keep it up in orbit longer (which is apparently what they were trying to do before as I pointed out in my previous reply), or B/use it to de-orbit at a time of their choosing rather than leaving it to chance? The ONLY reason to burn excess fuel is because it's a safety risk, but it would be much safer to de-orbit at a time of their choosing (so it ends up in the ocean), rather than leave it to chance, which is what they are doing now. To me this suggests that they are not worried about safety at all.

But all if this is irrelevant unless the object in question has been confirmed to be Tiangong-1? There are over 1000 operational satellites in orbit, and more that are non-operational. Without an ID, we are just building assumption on top of assumption.

originally posted by: rickymouse
a reply to: FireballStorm
This is just a possible explanation to what you are seeing, I do not know if it is relevant though. I just know that this is shortly coming down. It is actually normally stationary, the streak is a timelapse is created by The earth is turning, the Chinese space station is not moving I believe.

It most definitely is moving in relation to Earth, and is not in a geostationary orbit, therefore it would leave a trail (assuming it was visible to the eye and not in Earth's shadow) on a long exposure irrespective of weather Earth's rotation is taken into account or not. Geostationary orbits make no sense for space stations since they are much further away from Earth, making the original launch, re-supply missions, etc much more expensive than they need be.

You can even see that it has a "ground track" from the orbital diagrams like this one:

Source: aerospace.org

If it was geostationary as you are suggesting, then it would not have a ground track, by definition.

It's also worth noting from that diagram, that Tiangong-1 is only visible OUTSIDE of the blue areas.

Having said all of that, your theory would still/also fail to explain why I observed the ISS (confirmed sighting - I've been tracking it for a long time now!) zig-zagging roughly a decade ago now, as well as the many other witness reports of zig-zagging starlike objects over many years/decades. Reeintering space stations/satellites could only explain a small fraction of those as there are not that many reentries (though things have started to pick up more recently!). It also begs the question why no one has never (to my knowledge at least) managed to photograph such behavior? We see photographs of much less common phenomena than this fairly frequently, like Steve for example.

Let me remind you again, when I have photographed a satellite appearing to zig-zag, the trail was straight as a die. How can this be explained away if the problem does not lie with human perception alone?

a reply to: TellEmRye

What you have described is interesting. I doubted my wife when she described a similar occurrence in Muncie, Indiana, that happened in the 1990's. She swears up and down she saw a star-like and sized light that zigzagged across the sky one night until it went too close to the horizon for her to see against the light pollution. She said she saw a 'UFO', which technically is correct, but I had never heard anyone else describe something similar until now. My wife does not read ATS, so, I am going to photograph your OP and share it with her. Very interesting.

originally posted by: Trickey280
So i took notice then a large white object went zig zagging through the sky and it was pretty low. It was making a loud beeping noise. I threw the covers over my head and froze.

Sometimes it's possible to fool the brain into hearing a sound that does not exist.



Anyone hear this silent gif?

originally posted by: FireballStorm
Thank you for your reply ricky.

originally posted by: rickymouse
a reply to: FireballStorm

I saw the US's first space station zigzagging through the sky before it didn't come back anymore. They were burning up the excess fuel it contained.

Did you read this somewhere? Have you got a source, or is it just an assumption you made because you saw it *apparently* zig-zagging?

originally posted by: rickymouse
a reply to: FireballStorm
They may be doing this with the China space station, but are running it in circles. They like to burn up the fuel if they can I guess. Maybe they have some control over this.

Has the object that looked like it was zig-zagging been positively identified as Tiangong-1? which post were you referring to, that mentions it?

I can see why you might think they are trying to burn up excess fuel, but if it is indeed the case that they do have excess fuel, then why not A/use that fuel to keep it up in orbit longer (which is apparently what they were trying to do before as I pointed out in my previous reply), or B/use it to de-orbit at a time of their choosing rather than leaving it to chance? The ONLY reason to burn excess fuel is because it's a safety risk, but it would be much safer to de-orbit at a time of their choosing (so it ends up in the ocean), rather than leave it to chance, which is what they are doing now. To me this suggests that they are not worried about safety at all.

But all if this is irrelevant unless the object in question has been confirmed to be Tiangong-1? There are over 1000 operational satellites in orbit, and more that are non-operational. Without an ID, we are just building assumption on top of assumption.

originally posted by: rickymouse
a reply to: FireballStorm
This is just a possible explanation to what you are seeing, I do not know if it is relevant though. I just know that this is shortly coming down. It is actually normally stationary, the streak is a timelapse is created by The earth is turning, the Chinese space station is not moving I believe.

It most definitely is moving in relation to Earth, and is not in a geostationary orbit, therefore it would leave a trail (assuming it was visible to the eye and not in Earth's shadow) on a long exposure irrespective of weather Earth's rotation is taken into account or not. Geostationary orbits make no sense for space stations since they are much further away from Earth, making the original launch, re-supply missions, etc much more expensive than they need be.

You can even see that it has a "ground track" from the orbital diagrams like this one:

Source: aerospace.org

If it was geostationary as you are suggesting, then it would not have a ground track, by definition.

It's also worth noting from that diagram, that Tiangong-1 is only visible OUTSIDE of the blue areas.

Having said all of that, your theory would still/also fail to explain why I observed the ISS (confirmed sighting - I've been tracking it for a long time now!) zig-zagging roughly a decade ago now, as well as the many other witness reports of zig-zagging starlike objects over many years/decades. Reeintering space stations/satellites could only explain a small fraction of those as there are not that many reentries (though things have started to pick up more recently!). It also begs the question why no one has never (to my knowledge at least) managed to photograph such behavior? We see photographs of much less common phenomena than this fairly frequently, like Steve for example.

Let me remind you again, when I have photographed a satellite appearing to zig-zag, the trail was straight as a die. How can this be explained away if the problem does not lie with human perception alone?

The wife and I were sitting out by the fire pit one night and were watching that thing zigzagging through the sky. It was going fast, in about twenty minutes it went by again. and in another twenty minutes or so we were watching for it again, but nothing zigzagged. It never came back again. we were waiting. About four days later there was an article about it in the paper. We were just lucky enough to witness it that night. We had no idea what it was when we saw it but the article gave me a reason to look it up and it said they were burning up the remaining fuel. I do not know how many times it came by before we saw it though.

According to the article we read, it was being positioned or something. I do not know how far a zigzag is, it looked from the ground like it would go at an angle one way and then switch direction and go at an angle the other way. Maybe it was lopsided or something, it acted like a drunk driver on the highway or when you fishtail on the ice and snow. From the ground it is hard to say how long the zigs and zags were, but they were definitely noticeable.

Here is an article I found about it. I didn't think I was going to be able to find it anymore. I guess I was wrong.The article talks about the firings in "Process" I don't know what that means exactly, but it was zigzagging pretty bad when we saw it both times. I thought it was a rocket or something weird but it was the space station.

en.wikipedia.org... This article does not have much about it zigzagging, the original one back then did state that it was for some reason. That was a long time ago. Gee, I was kinda bummed, I thought maybe I was seeing a UFO or something at the time.. Here is another article. www.artgomperz.com...

This thing was zigzagging. Maybe it is because they were only using two of the three thrusters when they were doing it. It was easily noticed. We saw it, I know what I saw, I did not know what I was seeing when I saw it though. No jet could fly that fast either. We watched lots of satelites and meteors over the years sitting around the fire in our back yard.

Have you ever seen the satellites with their thrusters on? This thing was zigzagging. They were correcting the direction as it was being guided downwards. No perception problems here, it even had a trail behind it as it was moving. It looked like a wobbly super high jet zigzagging but no jet I have seen went that fast. It went around the world in twenty minutes or so.

I thought I read that the chinese space station was a stationary space station. I could be wrong about that, but it is shortly coming down and they may be doing something to prepare it. Otherwise I would have to say maybe whoever saw this might have been just seeing a star through a lens effect where things seem to move around because of atmospheric anomalies I have seen stars waver, that is common actually if you look up in the sky. Everything I have ever seen in the sky over the last fifty plus years has been identified, I have never seen something that couldn't be explained if you actually researched things.

a reply to: rickymouse

I'm still skeptical that they would need to zig-zag in the way you describe, which also exactly fits what I have observed on multiple occasions. However, at least it adds weight to it being something fairly mundane.

Regarding the Chinese space station, you do realize this thread it quite old now? So it's very doubtful that space stations could account for what most people have reported in this thread.

Yes indeed, the atmosphere can be turbulent, but that turbulence would be way too random to account for what people are describing. It still does not account for the result of trying to photograph the effect.

Good to hear that you've had good success IDing what you've seen over the years.