Has anyone seen anything like this before ... ?

[beachphotographer]

Hi,

I was in my garden about midnight last night and I saw a strange pulsating light. I live by the beach in S.E Cornwall, so I see satellites, helicopters, planes all the time. But this was different.

The light was pulsing red/green/blue incredibly brightly and continuously. Then every now and again it would drop suddenly as it was falling from the sky, then it would fly up again and move up and down like a bouncing yo-yo.

I'm no good with distances but I would say it was between 20-50 miles away. The movements were huge and could be seen with the naked eye.

I took some photos with my Sony A300 and my 400mm 5.6 mf lens that I use for surf photography.

30 Secs/Iso 1600

Zoom in on the action

Now I'm NOT saying this is a ufo, I don't believe in ufos. I just found this really interesting. I've spent hours and hours gazing into the sky by our house, completely unrestricted by light pollution and I have never, ever seen anything like this.

If anyone knows what this is, satellite, etc - please let me know.

Thanks,

P.S: The lines aren't camera shakes, I was using a tripod with a remote release cable. You can see the perfectly straight lines from other objects in the frame. I also have another 15ish shots that show this more clearly.

[dave1978]

Hummmm certainly looks strange, which direction were you looking?

[beachphotographer]

Straight out to sea, about South, South West. I've got to go out but when I get back, I'll upload a shot taken with my 24mm lens that shows the garden, sea, etc so you get a better sense of perspective. All the photos are currently in the huge Raw format and it take ages to compress them on my mini laptop.

Cheers

[Doc]

Was the tripod knocked during the exposure as that could account for the squiggly (Technical term) lines.

Or is this the actual shape you saw as 20-50 miles is a long way to see this much detail.

[Space Bat]

Interesting -

Perhaps you should consider moving? There is a high percentage of witnesses of such craft being visited, abducted and experimented on.

[dave1978]

Could be a helicopter with searchlight! hovering practice or something like that.

[beachphotographer]

Hi,

The light was far too high up to be a helicopter. We get helicopters 3-4 times a week here, sometimes way more because we're right by Plymouth with the Navy Base. Helicopters just don't fly that high or drop that much then fly off at a right angle.

The UFO thing is very funny but if I thought it was a UFO, I'd be posting this on a UFO forum. I thought on a star gazing forum I may get some good scientific explanations.

There is one thing I can absolutely guarantee, that there was zero camera shake. I had the camera low down on a tripod and used a remote release cable.

Plus, you can see the other star trails are all straight, none of them are squiggly.

Don't quote me on the distance, it's impossible to tell. I would say it was probably 30ish miles.

I should say also that my lens is a 400mm mf lens but when fitted onto my A300, it has a conversion factor of roughly 1.5x making it roughly 600mm.

Anyway, thanks for your interest. I'm gonna go and resize the raw photos and upload them here. Shouldn't take me too long.

Cheers

[Astrosurf]

If your camera was stable when you took the pic then that squiggle is the object moving. If so, it was certainly moving around a lot in 30 secs! Did it move slowly diagonally to the right to create that long bright streak?

Things up in the sky, with no object neraby to give a sense of perspective, can seem bigger or further away than they actually are, especially at night!

Hmmmm, wonder what it was?!

Alexxx

[astoc]

Whats interesting is that the light initially moves with the same 'trail' as the background stars. could this be a geostationary satellite undergoing adjustments to its position?

EDIT: not geostationary... stationary in space relative to earth turning. bah you know what i mean! lol

John

[beachphotographer]

Ok, here goes!

I have uploaded a few more shots. I've resized them from 4000 pixels to 500 pixels wide and have zoomed in and cropped the interesting parts.

I can not stress enough, you are not seeing camera shake. I bought a tripod to minimize camera shake during high shutter speed surf photography, something that's not really necessary with that much light. I'm really, really careful with camera shake, I didn't go anywhere near the camera once I'd hit the switch for the 30 second exposure and there wasn't even the slightest breeze outside.

Anyway, as these shots show, the light trails in the background for the other stars/satellites are perfectly straight, it would be impossible to have moved the camera and not affected their trails.

First shot:

This is taken from my garden, you can see to the right the town of Looe. The cliff curves right around as you can see in the photo.

The red light is a fishing trawler. I assume, it was quite far away but didn't have enough lights to be a Navy vessel.

As you can see in this shot the light isn't that high above the horizon:

Here is the same shot with more notations and lightened up so you can see the land/sea clearer:

This is a 30 second exposure, just look at how quickly and how far the light travels over 10-15 seconds. Notice also how all the other star trails are perfectly straight. When I shot this, I remember it took roughly 1/2 a second to complete that jump. It just seemed so unnatural.

Here it is zoomed in:

Another shot - Notice how the light trail is different colours throughout. The light changed maybe 1 or 2 times a second, that gives you a rough idea of how fast it was travelling when you look at it's light trail:

Zoomed in + darkened image so colour was more noticable:

Another shot - again, notice all the other light trails are straight, only the weird light is moving. (Image lightened so other light trails are more visible)

Zoomed in:

Another shot - Notice the distance it travelled over the 30 second exposure:

Zoomed in - This one is just incredible to look at:

[beachphotographer]

Post 2: (10 Photo Post Limit)

To get a better idea of how long the light trails are/the distance over 30 seconds, I've done a (Rubbish) diagram:

(This is the image from my first post above.)

Below is a shot of what I am 99.9% sure is a genuine satellite. Notice the long thin straight line, this was shot in same direction, just above the town lights in the first shot:

Ok, so there's a bit more information. Here's my theory, it's a lightweight satellite, perhaps fairly close to earth/in our atmosphere and the huge jumps are refraction (not the right word I know) caused by moisture in the sky, making it look like it's jumping when it's not?

I think I'm probably wrong though as I swear it was in our atmosphere and was in fact fairly close. Also, the jumps were just too big.

I just remember the first time I noticed it, I was about to run in the house and ring 999, I thought I was seeing a plane crashing down in free fall. My heart literally stopped. But then it bounced back up again!

I'm sure someone here has the answer, please let me know if you do.

Thanks!

[beachphotographer]

(Sorry, double post)

[Cornelius Varley]

There is a constellation on the far right of your wide shot. Would this constellation be Orion by any chance? The bright object is most likely to be the star Sirius. It and Venus when low in the sky are often mistaken to be UFOs. What was the surface the tripod was placed on ? The streaks look like oscillations of the camera / tripod.

Peter

[PeterMammoth]

Looks like a trace output from the LHC. Perhaps some protons escaped

But seriously, it reminds me a bit of this aborted missile launch recently:

Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway | Mail Online

That was out as sea as well.

[beachphotographer]

Hi Cornelius,

You're right Orion's belt was close and Sirius too was nearby, but the light was neither I'm afraid. The intense flashing colours and the sudden drop and bouncing would rule out any star.

I know the trails look like camera movements but firstly, I saw this with my naked eye, the camera just backs up what I saw. It was far more breath taking and noticeable whilst it was occuring. Secondly, the camera was completely steady. You can 100% rule out camera shake two ways (three if you count me as a witness ). Firstly, NONE of the other stars/satellites feature any signs of camera shake at all, not even slightly. Secondly, the image of the satellite shows no camera shake at all.

All the shots were taken in zero wind conditions. Half on a kitchen worktop; shooting out the window, then the other half were taken outside on the concrete patio, again zero wind.

All the shots were taken with me roughly 1.5m away from the tripod using a remote release cable.

Hi PeterMammoth,

I hope it wasn't a Russian missile! I could be wrong though!

[astoc]

Am I right in thinking that the last pic in the first of your most recent posts would be impossible to reproduce unless the light source was also moving laterally to the motion of the stars as well as vertically?

It has to be more than a coincidence that for much of each shot the light source follows the path of the stars pretty accurately, surely?

[dark knight]

I notice that the strong white light part of the object in question is the same length as the star trails and forms the same arc, which to me indicates that what you imaged is moving through the field of view at exactly the same rate as the other stars, this convinces me it is not an aircraft, helicopter etc. The hard bit is explaining the colourful swirly up and down pattern (very technical term).

Very intriguing puzzle...

[astoc]

Yeah. Surely its a satellite going a bit nuts?

[dark knight]

Just a thought, it couldn't be vibration caused by the camera shutter operation (some are quite clunky) could it? you did say you saw it with the naked eye didn't you which of course would rule out the above.....hmmmmm......

[barkis]

This is looking out to sea, so could it not be a tall beacon attached to a Bouy, or a ship. Could be a Funnel too, that is reflecting a separate light source. Sirius would fit the bill, as the colour changes of the star due to atmospheric dispersion, would reflect faithfully from a reflective surface.

The movement can be accounted for by oscillations caused by sea swell. the refection could move up and down the shiny mast quite rapidly, giving rapid up and down, and sideways movement. You could maybe point a green laser in the direction of this mysterious light, and if there is a reflective medium involved, it would perhaps be indicated on any exposure you took, by the presence of the green colour on the image.

Of course I may have just written a load of codswallap.

Ron.

[beachphotographer]

Astoc and dark knight, you're right when you say the object is moving through the field of view at exactly the same rate (from eye view anyway) as the other stars. The bright white light is the object when it is stationary. Which I agree makes it so puzzling when trying to explain the rapid bouncing motion.

Astoc, I too think it may be a satellite - this may sound far out. But what if it is a small communications satellite that is colliding with a number of space debris and decommissioned satellites? Incredibly unlikely but it would explain the crazy action.

[Moonshane]

may be a daft suggestion but could it be one of those chinese lanterns about to bite the dust or being blown about in gusts? they seem to be everywhere at the moment.

[beachphotographer]

Dark Knight, I've been out tonight trying to emulate camera shake just to show people here. It looks nothing like the above and every time when the camera settles, the star in question rests on it's plane of travel in a different location.

Emulating camera shake is just impossible, especially without altering the trails of the surrounding stars.

Barkis, that is the kind of far fetched but possible explanation I'm looking for. The only thing is, the only other light source was a flashing red light in the sea. That doesn't account for the intensely bright green, blue and red that could be seen in the sky.

[beachphotographer]

Shane,

That did cross my mind, but I saw one recently flying over a small village and it stayed orange and just gently glowed. I also noticed that past 2 miles it wasn't really visible.

This object was miles and miles in the distance, the falling and rising/bouncing motions were so, so fast that it couldn't have been one of those lanterns.

[barkis]

Well, Green and Red, not sure about Blue, are Navigation light colours, so perhaps there is a link, even if it is a tenuous one.

Ron.