Beach stargazing question

[Manok101]

So over the past few nights my views have been out over the ocean, and I was wondering, I keep seeing straight flashes of blue light. Almost too quick to see. There was just haze in the area I saw them at, I was thinking lightning?

[cathalferris]

Entirely probable. Lightning can be seen from a surprising distance over water, especially if it's C-C lightning in the tops of 30-50 thousand feet tall thunderheads. If my maths wasn't too far off, airplanes at 35k feet can be seen out to about 100 miles in clear air, so lighning would be about the same.

Check your local weather bureau for recent lightning strikes - maybe they would have a map and you could spot whether there are clusters offshore at about the same time you were looking out.

Alternatives (guesses mostly) would include lighthouses, ships/trawlers with bright lights if the lights were being shone around.

[damnut]

Hi Manok101,

Echo comments above, there are also a phenomenon called 'sprites', these are electrical discharges that travel vertically above thunderstorms into the upper atmosphere. They have been mistaken for ufos by pilots see :

Plenty of other clips, but have been seen with both sea and dessert horizons.

Cheers

[Manok101]

The video of the things going upward are close to what I saw. It happened too fast to be sure of a direction. This. Happened a few hours before a massive storm hit the area. So I think that's it.

[laser_jock99]

I have seen a similar thing- turned out out to be lightning storms 100+ miles away. We had a perfectly clear sky- no cloud at all, loads of stars down to the horizon, but I kept seeing mysterious blue flashes out the corner of my eye from time to time. After staring at it for a while I was convinced it was real. The next day I checked the weather reports and there had been thunderstorms in the Bristol Channel 100 miles due south of me. Because we live in a dark sky area it was visible- probably wouldn't have seen this effect from a town or city?