Odd sighting (bird, plane?)

Smyth

Seen something that didn't quite make sense today.

I was coming home at 9pm. It was starting to get dark and the ash from the recent volcano was starting to fall.

When I was pulling into the drive, I noticed a long object (which at first I thought was a plane) flying overhead in the clouds. It had a range of orange lights on the bottom which didn't flicker, but rather pulsated with intensity.

I assumed it may have been a plane. But don't planes have 2 colours blinking? And aren't all the planes grounded (up north anyway). Then I thought it may have been a helicopter. But yet again, it didn't have blinking lights, it was moving pretty fast, and it didn't make any noise.

And if it happened to be either. Why would the be out flying just as the ash cloud was coming over the town.

I r confus.

Odd.

Riamfada

Well it depends it may have been at a safe altitude but there has also been light aircraft up and about the last few days. Im assuming the lights you seen were the Nav lights on either wing of the aircraft?

Smyth

Actually no. It was a long cigar like shape that had a line of lights on it's belly. A plane would have them on opposite wings, no?

loldog

Smyth wrote: »

Actually no. It was a long cigar like shape that had a line of lights on it's belly. A plane would have them on opposite wings, no?

That is correct, and they would be red and green, not orange. It's a familiar sight. What you're describing doesn't sound like that.

What kind of altitude was it at, and was it moving in a straight line? Was it going faster than you would normally see a plane go?

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kylith

I've heard lots of reports of paper lanterns being mistaken for UFOs recently; they don't fly very high, are orange in colour and may well appear to move in formation depending on the wind.

Riamfada

kylith wrote: »

I've heard lots of reports of paper lanterns being mistaken for UFOs recently; they don't fly very high, are orange in colour and may well appear to move in formation depending on the wind.

Asian paper UFOS

Thornography

Allot of heavier duty plans are flying through the ash to see exactly what sort of damage, if any, it would cause to the engine and other parts.

Yup, Sounds silly, but its being done by more people then you would think.

My guess is you`v seen said tester flight.

Smyth

kylith wrote: »

I've heard lots of reports of paper lanterns being mistaken for UFOs recently; they don't fly very high, are orange in colour and may well appear to move in formation depending on the wind.

No. This was moving faster than a plane. Not a chance of it being a lantern. It would be far too dependent on the wind.

Thornography wrote: »

Allot of heavier duty plans are flying through the ash to see exactly what sort of damage, if any, it would cause to the engine and other parts.

Yup, Sounds silly, but its being done by more people then you would think.

My guess is you`v seen said tester flight.

Still though. You'd see the wing lights. There were none.

I could definitely make out the shape of the object. Like I said before. Long. Cylindrical, with lights on the bottom. No wing lights at all (unless the lights were off and it had small wings or something). I watched it for a good 30 seconds trying to figure out what it was.

Excuse the crappy sketch, but it's the best I could muster with a mouse:



Also like I said before. The lights pulsated. They didn't blink or stay at one intensity.

maccored

you seem convinced you saw a UFO. No other explaination seems to suit.

Smyth

No other explanation seems to fit. If You could offer an intelligent alternative that isn't so easily dismissable, I'm all ears.

There are pretty big factors to counter an idea such as a plane or helicopter...or lantern :S

you seem awfully hesitant to the idea of it not being an identifiable aircraft. Can I ask why?

Dave!

OP why did you post this in the Paranormal forum rather than Astronomy or Aviation?

That's what indicates to me that you're angling at it being an alien spacecraft.

It would make more sense to me to rule out all other (ie. known) possibilities before you even consider that one. So surely the first port of call should be to ask people who know about aircrafts, and then spacecrafts/satellites/etc.

maccored

Smyth wrote: »

No other explanation seems to fit. If You could offer an intelligent alternative that isn't so easily dismissable, I'm all ears.

There are pretty big factors to counter an idea such as a plane or helicopter...or lantern :S

you seem awfully hesitant to the idea of it not being an identifiable aircraft. Can I ask why?

because you havent looked at all the options of what it CAN be yet. You are, as one might say, jumping to conclusions.

loldog

maccored wrote: »

you seem convinced you saw a UFO. No other explaination seems to suit.

It is a UFO. Nobody has provided a satisfactory explanation such as a manmade craft that answers to this description.

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kylith

Dave! wrote: »

OP why did you post this in the Paranormal forum rather than Astronomy or Aviation?

That's what indicates to me that you're angling at it being an alien spacecraft.

It would make more sense to me to rule out all other (ie. known) possibilities before you even consider that one. So surely the first port of call should be to ask people who know about aircrafts, and then spacecrafts/satellites/etc.

Hear, hear!

pookie82

maccored wrote: »

because you havent looked at all the options of what it CAN be yet. You are, as one might say, jumping to conclusions.

What other options are there? Planes, helicoptors and satellites and lanterns have all been ruled out, no? The description sounds like none of these things.

The OP saw something strange and posted it in a paranormal forum because for him, it was literally paranormal and he couldn't find an explanation that suited what he saw.

I've seen an awful lot of threads lately where people are being targeted (to an unfair extent I would say) for posting about unexplained phenomenon. It's really putting me off this forum.

kylith

No, Pookie, he has rejected any explanations given because it seems to suit him to decide they're wrong. Do we know for certain that there is definietly no model of plane with orange lights? What about landing lights? What about fog lights? Perhaps they're special lights that the plane uses in hazardous conditions such as flying through a cloud of volcanic ash? Has the OP been in contact with the aviation authority to ask if they can explain what he saw? Could it have been a different type of craft like an airship or balloon? For all we know he could have been hallucinating.

People are not being 'targetted' on this forum with anything other than rational explanations for what they've seen or heard. If they want to throw their toys out of the pram when people point out that often houses make weird noises because of pipes, not ghosts, and lights flicker because of dodgy wiring rather than poltergeists then that's their problem. I don't see any notices up saying that you can only post here if you believe in supernatural phenomina and I'd much rather completely exhaust the normal before turning to the paranormal for explanations.

loldog

kylith wrote: »

No, Pookie, he has rejected any explanations given because it seems to suit him to decide they're wrong.

So have I because they're rubbish explanations. Do you know of any aircraft that has no visible wings?

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kylith

loldog wrote: »

So have I because they're rubbish explanations. Do you know of any aircraft that has no visible wings?

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What gives you the authority to say they're rubbish? Thoroughly investigated them all, have you?

In answer to your question:
Helicopters
Hot air balloons
Blimps and other airships
Weather balloons
Chinese paper lanterns
Any aircraft seen at night from the ground, like this one was.

Smyth

kylith wrote: »

What gives you the authority to say they're rubbish? Thoroughly investigated them all, have you?

In answer to your question:
Helicopters
Hot air balloons
Blimps and other airships
Weather balloons
Chinese paper lanterns
Any aircraft seen at night from the ground, like this one was.

Jesus lads. Relax. It's the internet ffs.
Night? It was 9pm. I could make out the thing clear as day. And if you ask yourself do any of the above fit a long cylindrical shape, I think you'll find the answer is no. If you rule out what makes a noise, you're left with even less. If you take into account high speed, yet again, we're ruling thing out. Multiple lights? Not blinking, but pulsating. No wings. Affected by wind? Come on. You lot get at me for jumping to conclusions. You's seem to blurt out the first thing that pops into your head without even asking yourself the most basic of questions.

And for the record. I didn't know there was an aviation forum.

This forum is a right laugh.

maccored

loldog wrote: »

It is a UFO. Nobody has provided a satisfactory explanation such as a manmade craft that answers to this description.

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its an unidentified flying object because no-one in this thread can tell us what it is the OP described? How, in gods name, do you work that out?

Duff

maccored wrote: »

its an unidentified flying object because no-one in this thread can tell us what it is the OP described? How, in gods name, do you work that out?

Well the OP saw an object that he could not identify so in my books that makes it a UFO to the OP.

pookie82

maccored wrote: »

its an unidentified flying object because no-one in this thread can tell us what it is the OP described? How, in gods name, do you work that out?

Er, the definition of a UFO is that it's unidentified. Not necessarily extraterrestrial or a sign of something spooky, just unidentified. So yes, until the OP is satisfied that he can identify what he saw, it remains a UFO.

pookie82

kylith wrote: »

No, Pookie, he has rejected any explanations given because it seems to suit him to decide they're wrong.

None of the suggestions here fit his description of what he saw. That doesn't mean he's insisting that this was some alien aircraft from outer space. It just means that he can't yet figure out what it was, as none of the suggestions match his description.

I see that its pointless to convince yourself that something is extra terrestrial without examining some possibilities. I also think it's kind of silly to write it off as an aircraft for the sake of keeping people happy if you're convinced it conformed to no style of aircraft you know of??

Rasmus

I may be wrong, but I think modern airships have numerous lights on the underside of the aircraft. Possibly you saw a test flight in a private craft? Did it look anything like this?

loldog

Rasmus wrote: »

I may be wrong, but I think modern airships have numerous lights on the underside of the aircraft. Possibly you saw a test flight in a private craft? Did it look anything like this?

That's more like it, a more plausible candidate.

It really bugs me when people genuinely say they saw something unusual in the sky and some idiot goes "hurr durr, it was probably a plane, derp derp".

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Smyth

Rasmus wrote: »

I may be wrong, but I think modern airships have numerous lights on the underside of the aircraft. Possibly you saw a test flight in a private craft? Did it look anything like this?

That's a good suggestion . But it was much narrower, and was uniform in width the whole way down. If I had seen that aircraft the darker body of the craft would have outscaled the lights quite a big, and these lights were a good visible size against the body. Which means that to see those lights at that size from where I was, It would have had to have been flying extremely low. I don't know if they come in smaller sizes or how fast they go, but this thing was just under cloud height and was travelling a fair old speed/hr.

I might actually ring around and find out if there were aircraft in the region at that time.

crushproof

Hmmm, thats a pretty strange one, I saw this thread yesterday and laughed it off as another case of Chinese laterns....However!!

My friend mentioned today he was sitting at his balcony in Cherrywood the other night having a , looking towards the Dublin mountains and saw pretty much the same thing...pulsating lights in a horizontal line before they disappeared after a minute or so. I said to him he prob say the aerials up at Three Rock but they were way to the right of the mystery lights. Definately sounds like the same thing! I'll ask him tomorrow if he can give more info!

Sooo as a UFO skeptik, I'm confused!

Rasmus

I did a bit of airship seaching on youtube and the aeronautic sites etc earlier, and saw a good deal of narrow cigar-shape airships. Look at this one, in Ireland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCR-yawej_w but I also saw some very futuristic looking tubular types, in silver, white and black. With so many designs it would be hard to draw a line under what the defined style is.
IMO the very fact that the airspace was closed makes its even more likely that other kinds of aircraft, either private or commercially licensed which the ban did not apply to, would be taking to the skies.

maccored

pookie82 wrote: »

Er, the definition of a UFO is that it's unidentified. Not necessarily extraterrestrial or a sign of something spooky, just unidentified. So yes, until the OP is satisfied that he can identify what he saw, it remains a UFO.

I honestly dont want to get pulled into one of these internet discussions one hears so much about, but it's unidentified to the OP (im sure whoever was in it could identify it). Thats exactly my point. It does not though, make it an alien visitation.

Smyth

Rasmus wrote: »

I did a bit of airship seaching on youtube and the aeronautic sites etc earlier, and saw a good deal of narrow cigar-shape airships. Look at this one, in Ireland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCR-yawej_w but I also saw some very futuristic looking tubular types, in silver, white and black. With so many designs it would be hard to draw a line under what the defined style is.
IMO the very fact that the airspace was closed makes its even more likely that other kinds of aircraft, either private or commercially licensed which the ban did not apply to, would be taking to the skies.

Shape and length are right on, if not a little fatter than what I seen. I don't know about their speed or if they're required to have the blinking lights. Plus the fact that this thing was deadly silent as it flew overhead makes me question the RC Zeppelin idea. I live in the countryside, so there was absolutely no other sounds. The fact that it was so close that I could make out the shape of the object tied in with the sounds that those things make according to the videos makes me question.

Sorry if you think I'm just poking holes for the sake of it. I'm not a sensationalist. I just like to eliminate the obvious in order to be left with something reasonable to work on. I also don't expect you guys to come up with the answer. It was paranormal to me, which says something. My father was standing beside me and he was as confused as I was. Even when he tried to claim it was a ufo, my initial reaction was to counter it with some other type of logic...but sure enough, the arguments I came up with didn't hold once I factored everything into it.

loldog

maccored wrote: »

Thats exactly my point. It does not though, make it an alien visitation.

Nobody said it was. A UFO is an unidentified object that is flying.

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