Strange things in the sky

[ToSeek]

Any theories? (http://www.hbccufo.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2311)

Some GLPers think they're meteors, but I think they're moving way too slowly for that. One at least just looks like an airplane contrail at sunset. I'm not sure about some of the others.

[Nicolas]

"Captain! aircraft, right ahaid!" :D

My 2Cents: aircraft. Atmospheric conditions for short contrails, low sun angle illuminating them, and possibly landing lights or other lights on as well (they didn'tt appear to fly that high). Of course I'm not sure, but it looks like that to me.

[Nicolas]

THe man says he saw jets afterwards. Maybe it was an exercise, and the first planes were cargo/tankers. I wouldn't even go into possible flares yet, as what I've seen on the clips can be explained by the planes themselve to me.

[frogesque]

Chopper with searchlight + other aircraft. Military exercise.

[Gullible Jones]

Bottom 2 look like meteors. The one on top might be a meteor or a satellite - I'm guessing a meteor.

[Johnno]

I love shakycam footage. Personally I'd sacrifice half a minute to haul my rear into the house to get a tripod.

Defenitely not meteors, too slow.

or a satellite

I'm guessing by satellite you mean a spacecraft? Guess you've never seen one, eh? Or are you saying a satellite burning up in the atmosphere? Would go a lot faster.

I'm pretty sure it's nothing coming down through the atmosphere, my guess is aircrafts, and since jets were mentioned, military exercise makes perfect sense.

[Nicolas]

Helicopter involved, good one, I didn't think about those. Major military exercise than, illuminated by the low sun? Contrails can hugely vary in length due to atmospheric conditions, and can be lit up by the sun.

[zebo-the-fat]

Looking at the video, it seems to be just an aircraft flying directly towards the camera with its lights on. What's the big deal? :o

[crateris]

I have distant relatives buried (yes, they have been dead for 80-90 years) near Hicksville. I will contact them tonite via E-seance and will get the skinny on this stuff.




tom :o

[Doodler]

I'm going with aircraft as well. One thing they ought to put in these articles is whether they are being taken anywhere near a major airport.

IIRC, there are three floods on passenger jets. Nose mounted and on the wings near the fuselage. Also, if these jets are seen taking off, their contrails don't kick in until over 15 thousand feet (roughly), so if they see one just suddenly appear, its just the plane reaching an altitude where the "dewpoint" of its exhaust is reached.

[smoothvirus]

I'm going with aircraft as well. One thing they ought to put in these articles is whether they are being taken anywhere near a major airport.

IIRC, there are three floods on passenger jets. Nose mounted and on the wings near the fuselage. Also, if these jets are seen taking off, their contrails don't kick in until over 15 thousand feet (roughly), so if they see one just suddenly appear, its just the plane reaching an altitude where the "dewpoint" of its exhaust is reached.

Like you, I'm certain that these are planes. And he wouldn't need to be anywhere near a major airport if those aircraft were cruising at 30,000 ft. The sunlit contrails were probably visible from 100 miles away.

[Gullible Jones]

I was thinking Iridium flare. (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980402.html) Not sure that'd be bright enough though.

[Doodler]

I'm going with aircraft as well. One thing they ought to put in these articles is whether they are being taken anywhere near a major airport.

IIRC, there are three floods on passenger jets. Nose mounted and on the wings near the fuselage. Also, if these jets are seen taking off, their contrails don't kick in until over 15 thousand feet (roughly), so if they see one just suddenly appear, its just the plane reaching an altitude where the "dewpoint" of its exhaust is reached.

Like you, I'm certain that these are planes. And he wouldn't need to be anywhere near a major airport if those aircraft were cruising at 30,000 ft. The sunlit contrails were probably visible from 100 miles away.

True, but they wouldn't have the landing lights on unless they were landing, nor would contrails suddenly appear on an aircraft at cruising altitude, as one sequence seemed to show. That was why I thought this might have been near an airport. Unless something is REALLY out of whack, those conditions wouldn't exist on a plane anywhere else.

[Swift]

Hicksville, Ohio is in the NW corner of the state, not real far from Wright Patterson AFB; military aircraft doesn't seem like a bad guess to me.

[Johnno]

I was thinking Iridium flare. Not sure that'd be bright enough though.

One thing would be if it was bright enough, another thing is the duration. From your APOD link: "Typical flares last 10 to 20 seconds".

Another site states between 5 to 20 seconds.

So no, that rules out Iridium Flares since the guy followed them for several minutes (and the video clips are longer than that).

[01101001]

Advice to UFO videographers:

Focus. Do an optical zoom in and lock in a good focus of the mystery object.

Use a tripod. If none is available brace the camera against a solid structure. You don't have to keep the object always centered; leaving the camera fixed, perhaps with objects in the foregorund, can help viewers establish angular speed of the object.

Focus. Nobody wants to see a fuzzy bright blob behind fuzzy power lines.

Do not use digital zoom. We can do that later if we want to see giant pixels that mean nothing.

Focus.

Give us an "establishing shot (http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/glossary.asp?cat=1005873&TRM=1006039)". If you can't do a wide shot of the environment before or during the event, do one afterward. Pan 360 degrees so we can have an idea of where it happened and what things were like.

Did I mention you should focus?

Edit: It figures. Others have compiled advice for filming UFOs (http://www.uform.org/advice.htm) before this attempt.

[Johnno]

01101001 I'm not sure you're giving good enough advice. You should've phrased it something like "the five most important things about UFO videography are Focus, Focus, Focus, Focus and Focus". ;)