Orange Light High in the sky

LashingLady

Now I could be a total idiot but did anyone just see an orange light travelling high in the sky in a north to south direction in the past 5 minutes? I am in Beaumont at the moment.

Thought it might be the space station but that's at 10.33 tonight.

thecommander

They usually turn out to be Chinese lanterns.

Captain Chaos

The space station goes West to East. Something travelling North to South assuming you are very sure of your directions does not sound like a man made object in orbit that's visible to the eye.

Something else most likely.

LashingLady

Never heard of a chinese lantern before now, but just been informed by my sister's boyfriend that that's what it was and a search on this forum let me see that I am not the first to see a "bright orange light high in the sky" and post a question here!

Sorry for wasting anyone's time!

djhaxman

Just a thought and I'm in no way having a go at the o.p. but if people saw these things in the daylight, would they come on to the astronomy forum and post about them?

thecommander

djhaxman wrote: »

Just a thought and I'm in no way having a go at the o.p. but if people saw these things in the daylight, would they come on to the astronomy forum and post about them?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=905

djhaxman

Calibos

LashingLady,

I personally have no problem answering this question again and again on the astronomy forum. I don't expect people to know about chinese Lanterns, nor about what things look like or how they move in the sky. It wasn't a silly question and you were right for posting it here and you accepted the answer without arguement.

What I hate though are the people who ask the question, you explain to them about chinese lanterns, you tell them how the strange 90º turn was due to different air currents at different altitudes and thus the lantern changes direction as it rises through them, or the gust of wind, or the vortices caused by a particular building it flew over etc etc, You tell them that something small and bright close by travelling relatively slowly looks like something large travelling at great speed high up or in space etc etc etc.

Then the person that came in knowing nothing and not knowing what they saw or what a Chinese Lantern even was, tells you(us) who have tracked the bloody things with our telescopes and actually saw the rice paper bag with the flame suspended underneath, or even seen the thing take off from ground level a mile or two away, they tell us, that there was no way that what they saw was a chinese lantern despite the fact that what they described is the quintessential chinese lantern sighting.

Some people just have a desire to feel special, to feel that they saw something literally out of this world and often there is just no convincing of them otherwise.

You however have nothing to appologise for.