This thread reminded me of a time when I was in my 20s, walking at night down a deserted, quiet backroad on the edge of an industrial estate.
Looked up, and a dark orangey coloured shape (it was a shape not a point of light) passed silently across the road and vanished into the darkness beyond the estate. I was confounded as to what it was and for some weeks seriously thought I’d seen something unearthly.
Took me awhile, and a couple of visits back, to realise that the lighting (typical orange streetlights, but a bit dim) could and did reflect the underside of (I assume, to account for the size of the shape I’d seen, but as I couldn’t see wings at all, perhaps not) seagulls but/or other large birds…
but for awhile there… I believed!
I quite like seeing satellites at night - the way they are brilliantly lit by the Sun then fade away within seconds. They’re spectacular with bins or a low power scope.
And I always wonder why people don’t report the ISS…going W to E at a stately pace, and bright.
Not as bright as Jupiter or Venus, but they’re static.
Yes, this was in the early 70s. A whole load of people outside the town cinema saw it, a couple of lights traversing over the town centre. Apparently there was a mention of it in the BBC local TV news the next day, didn’t see it but one person mentioned something about ‘elaborate hoax’ but I didn’t hear anything definitive. Would love to know for sure !
If anyone here has Amazon Prime video, there is a low budget film on there named The Vast Of Night that is inspired by these kinds of stories. I thought it was really enjoyable!
One evening, I was about 8 miles west of Bristol (probably relevant, see later!) I saw a bright light that was moving slowly in the sky, it shot sideways about a degree of angle across the sky and then rapidly became diffuse and faded out over about a second. A few seconds later it reappeared travelling slowly once more, and after a few more second it just vanished.
A fairly typical description of a UFO sighting. However…
About 15miles south west of where I was lies Bristol airport. The weather was still with little wind and included partial mid level cloud cover, it was also good conditions for the development of a stable inverted thermocline.
My rational conclusion:
It was a aircraft that was ascending out of Bristol Airport, with the “landing lights” still on (but only one of them was visible from my position), and too far away for me to see the navigation lights against the light pollution from the city. When it briefly transitioned through the thermocline over the city, the refraction caused an apparent rapid displacement of the image. It then entered a cloud, scattering and diffusing the light before the cloud fully obscured the light. It exited the cloud on the far side, so when it once more can into view from behind the cloud, the light reappeared far more suddenly. It then continued it’s ascent before the pilot switched off the lights!
