Barry Fitz-Gerald

Low flying birds (Barn Owls, Herring Gulls and the like) can reflect light even in what seems to be a dark sky location at night, and are visible especially if you are totally dark adapted. But this reflected light is more of the diffuse puffball type and not a point like source as you describe. This only applies I would suspect to birds flying lower than a 100ft or so? During early twilight birds like gulls and waders with light bellies and flying in V's can appear like a formation of erratically moving amber coloured orbs, but prolonged observation will often reveal what they actually are. Your sighting took place more or less at the time the sun was at its lowest point below the horizon, so to reflect sunlight the whatever-it-was must have been very high - outside the atmosphere I would guess, but maybe someone could do the trigonometry and give you a minimum height to reflect sunlight at that time and date.

On the wobbling - can you expand on what degree of wobble you saw - fast/slow, how wide was the deviation from the straight line (amplitude), abrupt change of direction or smooth and like a falling leaf or more like a zig-zag?

Of course its not only amateur astronomers who are bothered by these silly thing. There is another group of folks with a somewhat unique skill set who tried to pin the tail on this particular donkey and failed.............

Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625(1).pdf

13 minutes ago, jacko61 said:

Everyone seems to be avoiding the obvious - visitors from another planet

You risk being burnt as a witch with comments like that.

.....................of course an aircraft would show other lights - usually red/green navigation lights or occasionally blinking white strobes, as well have having engine noise - so whatever it was was either reflecting sunlight but this would mean great hight such as above the atmosphere, it was self illuminated or just had one light that could be seen from all directions. Landing lights only illuminate ahead of an aircraft, not behind. 

Yes - powered but wobbly.

Worth considering every possibility!

10 hours ago, Rich1980 said:

Could passing behind some faint cloud maybe alter the appearance of its path? 

Well, this is a possibility - was there cloud about you noticed?  A similar phenomenon can be seen with flaring satellites, those that increase in brightness and then fade away to nothing. I have seen a few where the initial flare is followed by a couple or three much fainter ones, and when this happens the feint ones do not seem to be in line with the first brighter one. This I guess is down to the lack of obvious visual background references which leads the brain/eye to see a difference in trajectory. With a pair of binos you can see a perfectly well behaved satellite going in a straight line - so a clear case of misperception. The same might have happened in your case if you lost sight of it momentarily and then tried to align the old trajectory with the new one you were observing. For 3 to see the same thing however is peculiar, but then again the three of you might not have seen exactly the same thing, just something similar - maybe?

I did wonder if an accidental fuel leak could have caused the effect, but I suspect it is unlikely as any movement sufficiently violent to be seen from earth would be catastrophic for something in Earth orbit - maybe someone else knows a bit more about this. Satellites can obviously be shifted to different orbits, but this has to be done via gentle nudges into intersecting transfer orbits, and this would not be apparent from down here.

8 hours ago, Malpi12 said:

NOSS is one set to google but there are several others

I am not 100% up on these sneaky beakies, but I think the positional accuracy data they supply relies on them maintaining precise station relative to each other, rather like a GPS network - again maybe someone can comment more authoritatively on this.

The number of people who have seen something similar to you is not trivial - many of them amateur astronomers, and what you saw seems to be another example of 'satellites' behaving badly.

Not many suggestions..................

But I will make an obvious suggestion - it does not sound like a satellite. Satellites can appear to slow down as they head towards the horizon due to the effect of perspective, but wobbling is not something they do. Must have been something else.

On 13/08/2021 at 15:59, Rich1980 said:

We sat there for a while.......................

If more that one person saw the same behavior, it would argue against a visual misperception (which might affected one person but would be unlikely to affect two or more) suggesting that the unusual movement was due to the object and not the observer.

No idea what it could have been though, but interesting as you say.

Whilst it will not affect the view as you say, it might affect the mirror coating as it decomposes - and it will also nag at you every time you look at it!

You could try and use something like a Rocket Air Blower held at arms length down the OTA to dislodge it - being careful not touch the mirror surface or the secondary - which might be the simple option, or you could just bite the bullet and remove the mirror cell (having first made a note of which screw in the OTA goes in which hole in the cell - mark the position with a bit of tape) and get to it that way.  Might have to tweak the collimation after, but it is a Newt, and you will have to collimate it anyway at some point.

Messing with newts can be a bit nerve-racking, but you end up learning how to tame them, just take your time and make a note of each step you take so you can reverse the process when you put it back together - if you choose that route.

If you are worried about messing with it, you could always just ignore it - I have stopped looking down my OTA because of the horrors it will reveal on the mirror surface - but the view through the eyepiece is the same as it always was.

Super construction Mark- thanks!  That looks a very capable mount.....................I did consider buying one but had second thoughts when I saw the price. This option would leave a bit left over to buy a decent pair of binos as well!

That is a lot of information combining date on your hypothesis and the field observations on the sands, it might be an idea to include a summary in your post – just a thought.

From a geological perspective though, the beach looks similar to ones I have seen in the UK and I would just add a couple of observation which may or may not be relevant in your opinion:

The dark particles are probably the strong ferrimagnetism mineral magnetite (Fe₃O₄) derived from the vast igneous rock deposits of the Columbia River Basalts and bought downstream to the coast by the Columbia River. It is a dense mineral (7.874g/cm³) compared to silica (2.65g/cm³) and mica (such as muscovite 2.82g/cm³ – biotite is a bit denser due to the Fe content but still in the same range) that form the bulk of beach sand. As a result of the density difference magnetite and the other components of sand will behave differently under the cyclical movement of water in the intertidal zone. It will also naturally segregate into layers due to the same cyclical movement, to produce the layering you show in your photo of the pit. Magnetite forms extensive 'placer' deposits along the Oregon coast and as you say has been commercially exploited for some time, containing economic amounts of other heavy elements such as gold and platinum. You get the same layering of dark and light where ordinary sand is mixed with finely comminuted organic matter on some beaches, but in these cases the dark organic material is much less dense than the sand, but you get the same effect of layering due to density segregation.

On a wet beach the stripy effect is produced again by density segregation of minerals, on a receding tide dense minerals will stall and deposit out on the landward side of a beach ripple, whilst the less dense particles will ride up and over the crest and deposit on the seaward side. Magnetite will also accumulate in hollows. You get the reverse pattern on beaches where the dark material is made up of organic stuff as I mentioned above.

On a dry beach, wind will dry the surface and mobilise the less dense silica and mica forming a lighter coloured near surface suspension which will blanket the more dense magnetite which will not be affected by wind.This will erase the dark stripe pattern giving the beach a very different look.

If you stand or drive over a layer of sand that overlies a deeper layer of saturated sand (maybe because of the presence of springs flowing from the land out to sea beneath beach level) the saturated layers will fluidise and the sand will compact as the water is expelled and bubbles upwards. This will result in your feet or your car sinking into the sand, and the more pressure you apply the deeper you will sink.

You mention smelling chlorine – is it possible you are detecting a mixture of sulphur from the decomposition of sulphur bearing minerals such as pyrite or decomposing organic material?

The tidal cycle on any beach is highly dynamic and obviously subject to lunar influence via the moons influence on strength and height of the tides. To my rather brief comments I would suggest that any observed link between the visibility of various changing patterns in the sand and the lunar or other astronomical cycle is a result of a link between them and their effect on the tides. Beach geomorphology is also strongly influenced by wind, slope, weather, longshore drift, humidity and a whole load of other factors. At first glance these normal processes can account for everything I can see on that beach in the photos.

I intend and hope these comments are taken as constructive and in no way intended to pour water on your comprehensive hypothesis, which I will re-read again and comment on if relevant.

Good luck with your investigations.

15 minutes ago, Stu said:

Or, if you want to scratch your apo itch, the Starwave ASCENT 102ED F7 Refractor gets great reviews at £495

Much better build quality than an ST120 I suspect - no need to shell out on a decent focuser. Nice.

Well, I would say that there is probably more CA with the f5 Startravel than you would see with an f7, but to be honest with you I think on on DSO's and star fields it is largely irrelevant. I know some people do object to it, and use filters to tone the CA down such as Semi Apo or the Baader 495nm Long Pass for planetary views, but these tend to introduce a rather annoying colour (such as mustard yellow) and I prefer the unfiltered views, which on star fields can be quite sharp once the scope has cooled down and as long as you are not looking at Vega or Sirius. Maybe its just my uncritical faculties but on wide angle star fields the CA, if it is there is not a problem. I had an ST 120 and a Evostar 80ED DS-Pro (which is no slouch for a tiddler) out the other night side by side, the 80 was noticeably sharper on the moon, Jupiter and Antares - but the 120 with a cheap SBONY UHC filter bought out the Veil Nebula really well, and could start to resolve M13. If I have a grab and go session the ST120 comes out and the DS-Pro stays at home, sad but true.

You also hit the nail on the head about viewing comfort. On a simple alt-az mount (I use a FOTOMATE tripod - you mount would be 1000% better) you do not have to contort yourself to see through the EP, and I also cheat by having a laser pointer as a finder, so no back-neck ache for me thank you. I have bigger more expensive telescopes, but the 120 is one of my most used because of the sheer convenience and comfort of use. It also makes me smile when i think how cheap it was compared to my other optics, I know its not everyone's cup of tea but worth considering if your budget is £500.

"Paralysis by analysis" is part of the fun of buying telescopes - we all go through it I suspect!

Good luck!

Not sure that this option would overlap with your Newtonian, but one possibility is the Skywatcher Startravel 120 - an F5 achromat. For wide field low, power viewing it is very good but to elevate it to the great category it needs a couple of tweaks which could be within your budget. Decent diagonal and eyepieces for starters, the supplied ones are the cheap stock ones you get with all SW scopes. I use a 2 inch TeleVue diagonal with mine and decent wide field eyepieces an the results on DSO's are very very good. The R&P focuser it comes with is OK, but begs to be replaced with a crayford such as a GSO or TS clone. SW do a crayford that is supposed to be interchangeable with the stock one on the ST120, but that assumes you have a grinder attachment for your drill so you can shave about 1-2mm's off the focuser collar to get it into the OTA.

It is a nice little performer on the sun with a Baader Film filter and Baader Solar Continuum filter as well, where the achromatic design is of no consequence. On solar system stuff it is otherwise OK, but the CA is there and a smaller 80mm Apo like the SW DS-Pro outperforms it.

But on DSO's, the Milky Way and open clusters it is great, and at £300 for the OTA only (which is great value for money) you can afford some upgrades and still be in budget - relatively.

Thanks for the info! This subject is a bit like Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre, up there somewhere, but not something people really like to talk about it. I suspect no-one on this forum or anywhere else for that matter can identify you what you saw, but I will have a stab at suggesting what it wasn't, drawing on the old desiccated list of usually suspects that turn up in these discussions.

1. Birds, fireflies or other wildlife. The under side of birds (particularly sea gulls) can reflect sunlight or other lighting and present a very unusual appearance similar to orbs of light flying erratically and sometimes in formation. What you saw manoeuvred in a structures and co-ordinated manner, so I would say that this interpretation is Highly Unlikely.

2. Balloons and or Chinese Lanterns, old favourites, but as they are passive objects and are dependent on winds aloft this interpretation is Highly Unlikely.

3. Satellites, these critters do not execute the maneuvers you describe, they go in straight lines – period. Having said that I saw a single light, just as you describe, executing the same sort of antics, appearing, stopping and then performing a couple of 360° orbits and then heading off in a different direction, but that was in 1969. So is there an old technology that we are using that could fit these observations? I would suggest that this is Highly Unlikely.

4. Drones – well these are one of the default explanations for strange lights in the sky and with good reason, they can move in extremely bizarre ways, often have lights and can be programmed to operate in swarms without the need for an operator input. But is it likely that someone would conduct a co-ordinated drone flight over your location at the time and date you had your sighting? Also sightings that match yours have been reported for many decades, well before the time drones were available (such as 1969) to the military let alone civilians. Despite these misgivings, objectively this interpretation of your sighting is a Possible.

5. Military aircraft, RAF night flying training is usually restricted to Monday to Thursday and at the weekends the only night flights would probably be of an operational nature (or training for an upcoming operational deployment), which would not involve chasing each other about the sky. Aircraft of any type maneuvering as you describe would produce noticeable engine noise as the throttle settings changed and mandatory position lights would be shown. In-flight refueling operations can look extremely weird at night as the tankers show arrays of lights, but the nearest 'corridor' where these op's take place is well to the south of your location. This interpretation is therefore Unlikely.

6. Military Flares - these tend to be orange and only used over the sea or military ranges, but unlikely at weekends (or unless training for an operational deployment). They drift with the wind and descend before burning out - they do not fly around as you describe. So this interpretation is Highly Unlikely.

7. Civilian aircraft, again, these would be required to show mandatory position lights and would be noisy when maneuvering. Formation flying at night is not something that would be done by anyone (let alone 4 pilots) who was not certifiably insane, and is extremely difficult to perform and suicidally dangerous. What about using NVG's? Well you need a specially adapted aircraft cockpits to use this technology, and even with these formation flying would be extremely dangerous. The military can do it, but it's still extremely hazardous and not the sort of thing that would be done outside a military range. And this would not include aerobatics. This interpretation is therefore Highly Unlikely.

8. Meteors – Not even worth bothering with.

9. Laser Light show. The moving point of a laser reflecting off a cloud layer can appear to move really fast and if more than one laser is in use they can appear to perform really odd gyrations. As you could see Deneb, and the weather at the time was anticyclonic with clear skies and no cloud I would say that this interpretation is Unlikely.

10. You hallucinated or made it all up. Well if you did hallucinate it the rest of your family was clearly on the same trip, and I think it unlikely you made it up as you sound like fairly sound to me. But then again I am a poor judge of character.

Only you can determine whether any of the above is a likely fit with your observation. But if none of them do, no need to feel alone, you will be amongst the many thousands of people who have seen something, which is as yet, inexplicable in the sky.

Sounds curious. Was there any engine noise - was it quiet enough where you were to hear any if there was, were there any flashing navigation lights (green and red and sometimes very bight white strobes as well) and how big (compared to say your outstretched fingers or hand) was the 360 degree orbit(s) they completed? When they approached each other did they do it head on or from an angle?

When the second pair came into view were the first pair still visible?

As they were moving on different headings I will not ask about wind direction.

There was an RAF base at Brawdy nr St Davids but that shut some considerable time ago I think.

John,

The David Trang paper concluded that concentric craters were probably formed as a result of igneous intrusions into the crater floors, which is plausible. There is very little evidence however for volcanism associated with any of these craters which you might expect, with the exception of one, Firmicus C, where there is a small deposit of pyroclastic material on the ring, but then again pyroclastic vents are not uncommon over much of the lunar surface. An argument can be made for the less glamorous origin as a simultaneous rim collapse as the crater experienced extensional forces such as during uplift - and Hesiodus A has been distorted by uplift. A collapse origin for the ring explains why these rings are compositionally identical to the crater rims.  Lavoisier and Humboldt have concentric craters very similar to Hesiodus A on their floors, and these are cut by fractures that formed as the floors of the larger craters were uplifted. Younger simple craters very nearby are not cut by these fractures, showing that the concentric craters pre-date the uplift and would have been affected by the deformation, but the younger craters simple craters post-date the uplift so would not have been subject to deformation. The picture of the concentric crater at the start of the Trang article shows how the original ring was deformed by later collapses off the rim which correspond to scars on the crater wall - these 'landslips' and the original ring are indistinguishable as far as spectrum and morphology go, and there is no hint of volcanic products either in or around the crater.

Interesting topic, but I suspect volcanism is not the answer they claim.

Well, Something along those lines - columnar volcanic rock - is a strong contender, though I am not aware of any research that has been done on the possible fracturing patterns in lunar plutonic bodies - those that cool very slowly underground and are the types to develop this form of structure. You might not expect much in the way of basalts on the lunar far side as they are more typical of the mare on the nearside, but you do have the mare filled Mare Ingenii,  Leibnitz and Van de Graaff nearby, so they must have some plumbing leading down into the crust that must be connected to large solidified rocks of a roughly basaltic composition. There are also a number of smaller craters nearby that have a very localised but very high olivine signatures which is odd, which suggest there is some unusual geology going on nearby and at shallower depths, but which could be a source for these strange creatures.  I think you may be on to something in your last sentence about 'variations in rock strength might occur when basalts are being formed under conditions'  maybe no one has looked in to how large a block could be produced and survive under different conditions.  Might be worth searching for further examples in the surrounding areas and trying to tie those in with unusual mineral abundances. Something to do this evening as there is nothing much on the TV.

2 minutes ago, Stu said:

people probably expect glass filters to be better

I did, cost me £75 - expensive mistake.

I have 2 filters for a 130mm refactor, one is a Seymour glass solar filter (about £75) and the other is a DIY job using the Baader Safety Film (£18 plus a couple of quid for cardboard and glue).

I was surprised at the difference.

The Seymour filter provides a nice (to me) yellow solar disc and black sky background, but the detail visible, in particular the surface mottling, granulation and the detail in the sunspots was not distinct as I expected. So aesthetically nice but a bit fuzzy.

The Baader solar film, which cost a fraction of the price shows sharp detail in terms of mottling, penumbra and faculae. The film does not lie flat in the filter, and has a few small ripples - makes no difference to the view. And of course with the Baader film you can use s Baader Solar Continuum filter which really enhances the contrast on all features, but does give the disc an appearance akin to a lime flavoured boiled sweet, which I quite like as well (but the boiled sweets) but some might not.

I tried both filters one after the other on the same telescope many times, always with the same result, the Baader film was always far superior.

I used a Baader Cool Ceramic wedge (visual version) for some time, much less faff but not cheap,  probably optically better than the DIY film version, but for someone new to solar or just a casual interest the film gives you almost the same result, but for a fraction of the cost.

That Panoptic looks silly there - send it to me I have a small space in my EP case that will fit it much better.

Yes, it is a big discrepancy, and impossible to reconcile the two.  As long as there is no paradigm shift in the interpretation of the standard model just around the corner!

I have never quite understood the problem with 'Dark Energy' as empty space is not empty as we all know - it is filled with the electromagnetic field which can have any value it likes due to quantum uncertainty - and even a negative value is still a value, its just that to us humans a negative value means less than nothing. Try telling that to empty space.  I understand that attempts to reconcile the predicted value of this 'vacuum energy' with the currently accepted value of 'dark energy' produces a mis-match of several orders of magnitude, but the fact remains that phenomena such as the Casimir effect shows that there is a 'vacuum energy' which can act on the physical universe and to me seems a logical candidate for the force behind the expansion of space. I suspect those cosmologist have got their decimal point in the wrong place - should have paid more attention in maths.

Hmmm, nice foam inserts - where did they come from?

Well, I resisted mentioning things like monoliths and films set about 20 years ago for a reason!  But seriously - if there is an explanation for these objects I would be very interested to hear, hence the appeal to possible experts out there who know a thing or two about the behavior of crystalline rocks under stress. I suspect crystalline rock (basalts and their coarse grained equivalents as well as anorthosites) have limited tensile strength, and so a column of rock of volcanic origin is unlikely to remain intact if it is subject to much stress such as would be involved in a tumble off the crater rim - and in any case there are no potential parent exposures visible anywhere around the rim. In some plutonic setting (volcanic rocks that solidify very slowly underground) crystals can grow to large sizes in what are called pegmatites - and a single large crystal might have sufficient tensile strength to withstand mechanical disturbance - but 70m long - might be a bit ambitious. I did consider the regular jointing as is seen in columnar basalts as you suggest, and that may well be a potential explanation. The only problem with this is that lunar basalt lava flows tend to be thin (as opposed to the monsters represented in Fingals Cave and Devil's Tower in Wyoming which might fit the bill) due to their low viscosity, and the absence of mare type activity in this part of the lunar far side. However a counter argument might be that these are fragments of a deep volcanic intrusion where crystallisation rates were retarded due to the insulating properties of the overburden which allowed this type of jointing to develop. I really don't know. The absence of spallation debris has me particularly foxed as there are indications of small impact craters on the objects, which should have produced at least some fragments if they are crystalline rock.

The article quoted suggested that they were the result of mining activity of an unspecified origin, but without exploring more conventional explanations I would like to keep that idea on the back burner. And with the gas turned down quite low. For now.

Cheers, Barry.

Yep - reckon we have squeezed all the juice out of this particular lemon for now!