Bizarre red moving object

[Pete Presland]

you certainly do see some odd objects at times when obseving/imaging, i saw a party balloon drift in front of the sun at the weekend

[Bradersno1]

Sorry if its been said but 6 satallites have been launched recently think they were from French guiney (spelling?) think they were ESA's can't remember now

[triton1]

No it won,t my bruvver drives one

[kalasinman]

@ michael. The lens was the equivalent of a 150mm, as it is a 100mm ff, on a cropped sensor. Yes it is a stack of 6 images. I'll ask about the rest.

FOV= 6x9 degrees, approx.

He's going to pull the image times off the EXIF data. I''l post that later.

I appreciate the thoughtfull questions.--Jack

[cutepetgroomer]

I took video of something described a few weeks back.. I don't know if I have it still or not but what I noticed was it would change its direction and go from seemingly bright to blinking lights. Not an airplane. Don't think it was a helicopter though as for anything else... If I still have it I can upload it

[Moonshane]

The problem with this sort of thing is that we will never know. For me at least there is always a logical explanation for cases like this which usually fit one of:

Genuinely odd looking 'behaviour' of a common object due to various factors

A hoax which has the desired effect

I would be ecstatic if one day 'aliens' presented themselves but for now I will stick with the above.

[Dave_D]

deffinitely sounds like a lantern... i get a lot of them here. one day there must have been 100 or more all at the same time, just looked like small red orbs... i was hoping it was hyper-intelligent aliens come to save me from a life of drudgery and programming.

[DeepSkyBagger]

I am fairly certain I know what this mystery object was. In 40 years of observing, I have seen it several times myself. Firstly, let me say that perception is a fickle beast, especially when seeing something unknown and even more so at night. You say the object was about the size of your thumbnail held at arm's length, but someone said that this is quite large, being the size of the full moon.

A thumbnail at arm's length is about 1.25 degrees across, or 2.5x the size of the full moon. Was your object really that big?

The movement of the object, the colour and the fuzziness all point to it being a small flight of birds. Birds' movement is, of course, independent of the wind direction. The dim reddish colour is palely reflected streetlighting. The fuzziness is because it is not a solid object but made up of several member objects. Most likely, you saw a small group of high flying geese. Geese frequently fly by night and can reach surprising altitudes. They look exactly as you described your object. Really.

On still, quiet nights, you can faintly hear them honking. In dark-sky locations, you can hear them but not see them - no streetlights to reflect.

If you spend a lot of time outside at night, this will never be a regular sight for you, but it will eventually become familiar. Well, it will after 40 years!

Cheers,

Patrick

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Sounds like a valid explanation. I have seen skeins of geese flying over my location, at night, and they can have a ghostly appearance. I would say they vary from grey to yellowish orange in appearance, depending on conditions. Not sure what the blue object is (motion blur on a weather balloon passing over?).