Search results

Hmm. I'm not so sure. Betelgeuse was directly above Orion's Belt in a vertical direction, and high enough that the twinkling would have been a relatively minor effect. Betelgeuse is one of the widest stars in the sky, so it tends to display less twinkling than other stars. Seen from a helicopter...

Mars has a broad spectrum, and includes a lot of green and blue light in its reflectance. One interesting characteristic is that Mars doesn't blink or twinkle, whereas Betelgeuse and Sirius both do. From Arizona, Betelgeuse was almost directly above the middle star of Orion's Belt, so that might...

Yeah. The first part of the sighting might have been a real drone; someone said they saw a quadcopter. But the chase segment might easily be a celestial object, or maybe several.

So they could have been chasing Mars at 100mph for several minutes, then lost sight of it, then noticed Orion to the South, with Betelgeuse, Rigel or Sirius as candidates for the next two sightings of the 'object'. Then they seem to have lost it in clouds.

Sirius is between south and southwest, and is brighter than Mars, Betelgeuse or Rigel.

The magnitude of Mars that night was +0.5, which is not particularly bright, but a little brighter than its average, and brighter than it is right now. Mars can get much brighter than that at opposition. Heh; +0.5 is the same as the average brightness of Betelgeuse, which is, of course, just...

That would be slightly east of south at that time of night, which means the 'object' they were supposedly chasing was now in a completely different part of the sky. The same part of the sky where Sirius was. Up until this point they were chasing something slightly north of west and above them...

Many years ago, Phillip Klass discussed the 1973 Coyne UFO which was described as green by the occupants of a helicopter, but the apparent colour of which may have been affected by tinted green windows in the helicopter roof.

This may have started as a drone chase, but I suspect that the 100mph chase towards the west was chasing a different target. Mars was up there, towards the west, and they might have been chasing that. Towards the end of the chase they said they saw the target near the central star of Orion's...

The best attitude to this sort of case is to assume that the witnesses are all broadly correct in their descriptions. It is their interpretation which is likely to be wrong. In this case, the many witnesses report a wide range of different observations; and this almost certainly rules out a...

Also easily explained by a flight of eight planes, not all flying closely together, seen at different angles and distances. We don't need to postulate a cluster of fire lanterns, but on the other hand we can't necessarily rule them out yet (without finding out the wind direction).

One option we haven't really explored is that the 8:00pm Phoenix event was a flight of fire lanterns. If the actual height of the phenomenon was only a few hundred feet, then fire lanterns would be a good candidate. I've seen quite a few formations of chinese lanterns, and they do look weird...

In 2004? That seems unlikely. There have been many conflicts since then; such high performance drones would have been very useful in that time, but do not seem to have been used in any real combat situations.

No, there is more to it than that. Since their estimates of height were unreliable, they had no way of discriminating between something which was a few hundred feet wide at 2000 feet, or a mile or so wide at 35,000 feet. It is literally impossible to make a reliable distinction between an...

We can discount all estimates of height, except for those which include details which can support such estimates. Without such details, estimates of height or distance are impossible. Stanley's observation is one of the few observations which could give a good estimate for height (if the planes...

My goal is to find out if it is possible to allow for a small amount of misperception on both sides, that would allow both types of observation to be broadly correct. For instance, there were eight planes up there, not five - if Stanley failed to notice some of the planes, then other observers...

I like that; an optimistic and positive take on misperception. Even though the police got their identifications wrong, they gave enough detail for someone else to correct them.

Here's an interesting 1997 interview with Capt. Drew Sullins, apparently the commander of the Snowbirds on that night. He doesn't address the 8pm event, but he does say two interesting things; first, there were eight Snowbirds in the air that night, and secondly the planes flew over the...

In which case you must accept that the formation would subtend 7 degrees when directly overhead, due to trigonometry. 14 times as wide as the Moon, moving at a much slower speed than any familiar aircraft. I think there is plenty of opportunity for this dimension to be larger, but perhaps that...

Based on Trigonometry. Unless Stanley made his observation at 90 degrees, i.e., directly overhead, the value of 5 degrees you keep quoting is too small. If Stanley made his assessment of 5 degrees width at 60 degrees elevation, that formation would subtend 7.04 degrees overhead. However, he...