One of those strange 'moving object' experiences.

[carastro]

I guess we were about a mile away.  Don’t recall any sound.  My son who l have told this story to in the past says l have told him it was green in the past.  Hubby thinks it was Red but if it was it certainly wasn’t a deep red.  Fireball is in my mind until it turned into a Y.  

Edited December 2, 2023 by carastro

[scotty1]

49 minutes ago, carastro said:

I guess we were about a mile away.  Don’t recall any sound.  My son who l have told this story to in the past says l have told him it was green in the past.  Hubby thinks it was Red but if it was it certainly wasn’t a deep red.  Fireball is in my mind until it turned into a Y.  

I was going to say ball-lightning , but now I've read there was a military testing station, it could of been flares, or paratroopers with flares on them. 

[carastro]

I have just realised that this Y shaped light from a vertical landing vehicle is upside down to what we saw.  So not the solution.  
 

Aquila apparently was a sound and acoustic testing site   

Carole

[fwm891]

A couple of weeks ago we had a few nights with strong northern lights in the UK but at home each night I was clouded out. I had to go out one evening following one such display and was driving back through rural countryside and decided to stop as it was clear and see if there was any sign of the 'lights' that night. I pulled off the road, got out of the car and walked a short distance from the car and looked up. Realising I was looking too far west I swivelled round towards north only to find myself flat on the ground completely disorientated...

I go out at home and there are familiar trees and building outlines forming part of the view (dark against the polluted skies) but out in that rural setting not giving myself any time to settle in I don't think my head could take all the darkness in ?

[Elp]

Sometimes at a dark site it can be a slight challenge finding the pole star as they're so many more stars visible in the sky.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Elp

[ollypenrice]

5 hours ago, Elp said:

Sometimes at a dark site it can be a slight challenge finding the pole star as they're so many more stars visible in the sky.

An SGL member on here may remember a club visit to my place during which, on their first night, she was sent to find me because nobody in her group could find Polaris. She reckoned they'd asked her to do it because she was the only woman in the group.  If you're used to a dark sky, and can routinely see Ursa Minor, it is very easy to pick out Polaris but you have to be used to it, as you say.

Olly

[Simone_DB]

Something happened to me a couple of years ago, or so. I was out on my balcony smoking. I looked up more or less at the zenith and I saw a bright point increasing in magnitude, it was not moving or that was my impression. For a fraction of seconds I thought of a supernova (😄), because I couldn't think of anything that my astronomical knowledge could lead me to think about, but the brightness began to dim after a few seconds. The only think I can think about is a satellite flare, but as I said, It didn't seem to move, and besides it was very bright for a polluted sky, that's why I was somewhat startled. I stayed with that idea anyway, for lack of others.

[Leo S]

On 03/12/2023 at 09:26, carastro said:

I have just realised that this Y shaped light from a vertical landing vehicle is upside down to what we saw.  So not the solution.  
 

Good point!

[Leo S]

On 05/12/2023 at 10:43, Simone_DB said:

Something happened to me a couple of years ago, or so. I was out on my balcony smoking. I looked up more or less at the zenith and I saw a bright point increasing in magnitude, it was not moving or that was my impression. For a fraction of seconds I thought of a supernova (😄), because I couldn't think of anything that my astronomical knowledge could lead me to think about, but the brightness began to dim after a few seconds. The only think I can think about is a satellite flare, but as I said, It didn't seem to move, and besides it was very bright for a polluted sky, that's why I was somewhat startled. I stayed with that idea anyway, for lack of others.

Slow flares are not uncommon, and with a light polluted (or hazy/semi-cloudy) sky it can often be hard to gauge movement due to lack of near by reference points. I've had the same experience on multiple occasions.

[robanddebrob]

The other night I saw a meteor travelling straight upwards, low in the east. It got no higher than about 45*. I'd never seen this before but assume that's my inexperience. I also saw a few other thin meteors and a thick one that seemed to end in a flash. Years ago I saw a flaming one going straight down from about 45* again,  seemingly to the ground. We were camping and wondered if we'd read about a crash when back in civilization! An astronomer told us years later it was probably a fireball

[Leo S]

16 hours ago, robanddebrob said:

The other night I saw a meteor travelling straight upwards, low in the east. It got no higher than about 45*. I'd never seen this before but assume that's my inexperience.

They are not really traveling up of course. These are what we call "earthgrazers" since they enter the atmosphere at very low angles, and only skim the outer edge of the atmosphere, but can have the appearance of an object shooting up from the ground. You can only observe earthgrazing meteors when the radiant is close to or below the horizon, and they are quite rare to observe. Usually they are only observed during times of high activity (we observed dozens in the buildup of the Leonid meteor storm of 2001 - for me this was the best part of the night, even better than experiencing visual rates of ~2500 meteors per hour later on in the night). They can be very impressive and long lasting, sometimes covering 1/2 the sky since they don't disintegrate as quickly as meteors entering at higher angles.

 

16 hours ago, robanddebrob said:

 I also saw a few other thin meteors and a thick one that seemed to end in a flash.

"Thicker" implies a larger particle/meteoroid, and therefore brighter. Many space rocks are made of relatively weak material, so when they experience the extreme forces associated with slamming into thicker parts of our atmosphere, they often catastrophically break up creating a bright terminal flash. Here's an alpha Capricornid my camera caught that exploded.

16 hours ago, robanddebrob said:

Years ago I saw a flaming one going straight down from about 45* again,  seemingly to the ground. We were camping and wondered if we'd read about a crash when back in civilization! An astronomer told us years later it was probably a fireball

Indeed, if you observe a meteor low down in the sky, it can only be a fireball since you are observing it through thick atmosphere which has the effect of significantly dimming objects due to "atmospheric extinction". You can see meteors high in the sky easily because you are looking through significantly less atmosphere, and they are also much closer to you.

A fireball observed low in the sky will often confuse people because they are so bright, which we would normally interpret as being close (that is normally the case with most lights we encounter, so our subconscious, decides that they must be close, creating an optical illusion), but fireballs can often be surprisingly bright, while at the same time being far off, despite atmospheric extinction.

It's not uncommon to see someone reporting that it "fell in the next field" or "just over the hill" if a bright fireball is observed by many, and there is a good example form just a dew days back, when a DAYLIGHT fireball was observed by many in the north. You can see where the event actually occurred (far out at sea), but at least two witnesses reported it apparently near to them, which of course could not be the case!

Quote

only 20ft above me above the beach

Quote

The meteorite landed in a field to the east of the A90 road.

It's obvious when you compare the locations of the two witnesses who made the above comments that they can#t both be right since they are many tens of km away from each other.

[900SL]

On 05/12/2023 at 12:43, Simone_DB said:

Something happened to me a couple of years ago, or so. I was out on my balcony smoking. 

Smoking what? 

😆 

[maw lod qan]

Anything you think you saw, was just a figment of your imagination!

[Simone_DB]

20 hours ago, 900SL said:

Smoking what? 

😆

The usual! 😉

[jjohnson3803]

About a mag +2 orange point source in the bowl of the Little Dipper last year - reminded me of a bright Mars.  No movement that I could see, just faded away after about 2-3 minutes.

I have more.  😄