What was this? A UFO sighting on a clear night in Canada.

[Ry Guy]

I'm new to the forum and want to share my story about a UFO sighting I had years ago. I live on an island on the west coast of Canada, away from bright city lights in my smalll rural town. Makes for great star gazing! When I'm out looking at the stars I love watching for satellites or funky space junk floating overhead. It was about 11:30 pm on a clear, moonless night when I saw something I've never been able to explain. Hope someone here can. And for the record, I don't think it was full of little green men. Now that I think about it, this thing couldn't have had any human driver either... they would have been liquified by the maneuvers this object is capable of. And if you know of any natural phenomonon that could explain what I saw I would love to hear of it.

So like I said it was late at night. I threw on a coat and stepped onto the lawn for a smoke. Being a nice clear night I startted scanning the sky for any satellites drifting past. Within a few minutes I was granted with one, or so I thought. It was coming from the North, and heading South-Southwest. Just your typical single point of white light telling me it was a satellite,moving at a typical speed.

As I watched, it looked like it's course would take it pretty much straight over my house. Big deal, far from exciting. I watched as it drew closer and closer to passing over me. As it started to cross thru Orion though, things started to get very... odd. Keeping my gaze fixed on the point of light, it looked like it was starting to slow down. By now it was near Orion's Belt so I used those stationary stars as a reference and sure enough this thing was slowing down. It came to rest just below the 3rd star in the Belt and stayed motionless for about 15 seconds or so. The first thought thru my head was, "Satellites can't do that."

It began to move again and briefly followed it's original course. Then it started a gentle yet very tight 180 degree turn after which it started re-tracing it's original track. Ten seconds later it again slowed to a stop and simply hung in one place. Every hair on my body stood on end. My neck was getting sore from cranning my head upwards, but I didn't dare look away.

A few seconds later the object once again started to move and again it did a tight 180 degree turn and now was back on it's original course. And yet again it came to a stop, but this time without slowing. It just stopped dead in it's tracks right above me in it's high orbit. Suddenly it jumped into action and began a new track at 90 degrees to the original and this time it was moving pretty fast. Faster than any satellite I've ever seen, but just barely.

It continued on this course until it was near the horizon, but even so with it being such a clear night I had no trouble seeing it still. Once again it slowed to a stop. I kept my gaze fixed on it, trying not to lose it amid the backdrop of the night's sky. Almost as if it could tell I didn't want to lose sight of it the object started glowing brighter and brighter until it was by far the brightest single point of light in the sky. I took a drag from my cigarette and watched with nervous excitment as this thing just kept getting brighter with each second that passed.

Then, almost as if it knew it had an audience, it decided to show off what it could really do. It accelerated from a dead stop and crossed the entire sky, horizon to horizon, in under a second! I was so stunned by that display I dropped my cigarette. And it didn't have a tail on it like you might expect on a comet or meteor. Just a point of light moving at horrific speed. Now at the other horizon the object again started glowing brighter and brighter until it was again the brightest thing in the sky. I was thinking it was going to dart about some more, but it simply vanished. Gone. The show was over.

So what's your take folks? Natural phenomenon or vehicle? I don't pretend to know much about satellite design, but satellites can not do what this thing did. I'll almost be willing to say nothing can, but I saw it for myself. What structure could withstand those kind of forces? Whatever it was it couldn't possibly have had a pilot... they'd be liquified by such maneuvers. And in it's big speed burst, roughly how fast might it have been travelling? My very rough guess is that the average orbital object moves at about 18,000 mph and takes maybe 30 to 45 seconds to cross the sky. This thing crossed the sky in about 1/2 a second. I like to think it was indeed an unmanned vehicle of some sort as the technology behind it boggles the mind. If it was something natural, still very cool!

Tell me what you think, or if you've heard of similar sightings.

Fire away!

[Edit: Actually I think the sky crossing was about 1.5 seconds, not 0.5. Also tried to make this post a reply in the UFO Napster thread but being at work right now I kinda rushed it and started a new thread. Sorry]

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Hello Ry Guy. Welcome to PF.

Actually, I moved it from the Napster. The napsters are for links and brief quotes only.

Thanks for sharing your story. It is Interesting to be sure. Many people think that ball-lightning or something like it might account for such stories. But as yet no one has identified a mechanism that could explain such a phenomenon; much less reproduced it in the lab.

If you look through the UFO Napster and the Crebible Anomalies Napster, you will find a number of references to suggested plasma models that might be promising candidates to explain some UFOs.

See also this thread:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=120171

 

[DaveC426913]

Ry Guy, let's assume for the moment thast it wasn't a vehicle making these movements at these kinds of speeds (IMO, human device or otherwise, I doubt this is a plausible explanation).

Let's assume it was not miles and miles away. What else might have caused this?

Do you where glasses? A reflection off ones glasses has often been mireported as a sighting.

Was the sky clear? Cloudy? No you said clear.

I've spotted things that for many seconds alarmed me byin looking like UFOs, but turned out to be seagulls flying overhead.

I'm not suggesting that these are an explnation for what you saw, I trying to suggest that we look "outside the box" for answers.

 

[SGT]

In a cloudless sky you have no means to evaluate altitude. The only thing you know is that the object had a high angular velocity. This can mean a fast near object or an extremely fast distant one.
Could the object be a relatively near helicopter with one light?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

...that went from horizon to horizon in a second?

 

[Mech_Engineer]

It was a bug in your eye

 

[zoobyshoe]

I've seen UFO's twice, both times in the presence of other people who also saw them. In one case there were two lights like you described, moving in non-ballistic ways. I was in a crowd of people standing in line outside a movie theater, and someone brought the whole crowd's attention to these lights.

I have no idea what they were, but they gave the impression of "disembodied" light. That is: they seemed like glowing gas, and there was no suggestion they were attached to a craft of any sort.