What flew over your house (yesterday)

[Alan 45]

Not yesterday, 30 minutes ago in the pitch dark!Sober as a Judge, I have just got back from walking the dog, during which I looked up at the stars. There was the usual commercial stuff going over at their cruising height - 40,000ft give or take - all nav. lights flashing. Easy to hear too.

Then I spotted something a lot, lot higher going west to east. One white light, at first I thought it was a satellite, but this light was flashing a steady 'beat', so it had to be an aircraft of some sort. It was travelling at an incredible speed and soon went out of sight. Being so high there was no sound....

What it was, I will never know. Anyone care to have a stab as to what it might have been? Serious suggestions on a postcard to......

Did it fade out and disappear ? If so its a satellite and it's not flashing it's your eyes , we saw very similar things in August and we couldn't work out what they were so I asked this a amateur astronomer we know

[Guest]

Did it fade out and disappear ? If so its a satellite and it's not flashing it's your eyes , we saw very similar things in August and we couldn't work out what they were so I asked this a amateur astronomer we know

Interesting. Most satellites are in geostationary orbits, for GPS etc. If the sighting was of a high-speed satellite, where was it going, I wonder? It was too fast to be in a geostationary orbit (unless it was very low indeed). At that speed it would leave the Earth in a few hours and not fit the definition of a satellite. Could it be a space rocket, from NASA or the Russians?

[Alan 45]

Interesting. Most satellites are in geostationary orbits, for GPS etc. If the sighting was of a high-speed satellite, where was it going, I wonder? It was too fast to be in a geostationary orbit (unless it was very low indeed). At that speed it would leave the Earth in a few hours and not fit the definition of a satellite. Could it be a space rocket, from NASA or the Russians?

It depends on how fast it was going I suppose , the ones I saw were moving fast but not as fast as say a shooting star but there are loads of debris up there old stuff from thirty years or more just whizzing around

Satellite just means it's in orbit , the moon is a satellite

[john i am]

Ron might have seen one of these [ATTACH]96225.IPB[/ATTACH]

one should have an open mind perhaps the pilot/alien had forgotten the stealth shield/cloak

[spanner570]

Thanks for all your posts on this....

It wasn't a Chinese Lantern.

It wasn't the start of WWIII.

I wasn't looking through a fence.

The 'object' was too high to make a noise.

I'm not going to ring 999 and say the Martians have landed.

It wasn't my eyes, the thing was flashing a white light.

It did fade out and disappear, all 'objects' in the sky do eventually.

It wasn't a satellite. I see them every night above our place.

It was going far, far quicker than anything I've ever seen in the sky, day or night.

It wasn't a little green man sitting in a cereal bowl.

Thanks again for your input, I appreciate it.

Ron

[Alan 45]

So I'd say it's cateracts then Ron

[ojays]

Any chance the flashing could have been pulsing.

Further to a previous post relating to loud bangs and doughnut contrails!

Just a thought

Gregg

[spanner570]

So I'd say it's cateracts then Ron

Can't have been Allan, we don't live near a fast flowing river!

[Alan 45]

Can't have been Allan, we don't live near a fast flowing river!

Touché

[Guest]

The Airbus Super Guppy, on it's way to Warton....

[Guest]

It surprising what you can actually see if you watch the skies at night. A couple of years ago sitting in the garden one late summers night, I saw what I thought was a shooting star speed across the sky, but it then changed direction before disappearing!!!

Cheers, Andrew

[Alan 45]

In the right place at the right time for once

Lynx HMA 8 going for a jolly about 10 minutes ago [ATTACH]96693.IPB[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]96694.IPB[/ATTACH]

[Guest]

My significant other went on a week's package to Lanzarote with a friend (leaving me and the cat behind to cook, clean, hoover, shop, put away, make a meal without forgetting to put the potatoes on before I start eating, etc. etc. (sob snif) and I wanted to check whether her departure was on time. I ended up with this fascinating site:

http://www.flightradar24.com/29.48,-12.58/6

[ATTACH]96695.IPB[/ATTACH]


Click on a plane and details appear on the left on where from and to, expected landing time, speed, bearing etc. All the planes (thousands ! ) are tracked in real time (every couple of seconds as can be seen when zoomed in) with their path shown since take-off. The amount of data whizzing about must be colossal. The image above shows a curved track from Delhi to Chicago, but the curvature is false due to the map projection because the flight path is probably a straight line as it goes near the North Pole.

Notice how Ukraine is still being shunned. Zooming in to Heathrow is disturbing.

I watched my wife take off at Gatwick and when she landed at Lanzarote I zoomed in to see the runway about 4 inches long. She landed from the south, then after touchdown she turned left, then left again, then right to the stand. Fascinating!

If you see a contrail over your house, just zoom in to your neighbourhood and click on the plane.

[ojays]

I used this to track VERA when she flew from Canada!

Fascinating.

[Guest]

Well, it wasn't today, but I only just saw this thread, two weeks ago, on returning from Orford to ipswich, I saw an Osprey, it was clearly on some form of exercise, as it kept doing low, banked passes right in front of the road I was driving along. I couldn't have ordered a better flight pattern for me to observe this, empty country road and low altitude. Quite a sight, I can tell you!