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Did you ever see a UFO?

Octothorpe

Student
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Joined
Jun 22, 2005
Messages
27
That is, did you ever see something flying in the sky that you couldn't identify? Not an alien space ship (that would be an IFO) but something you really thought was odd and had never seen before and didn't have a clue what it was?

Sorry if this has been discussed recently, but UFO is such a common term on this forum that it can't be searched for (either that or the search function is out of whack.)

I ask because I saw something in about 1978 or so that I've always wondered about. I would really like to know what it was.

Here goes:
I lived in Southeast Alaska. I was walking home from sports practice at school one cold winter evening. It was dark and clear. I was looking at the stars as I walked. Suddenly, I saw a crescent of white light "turn on," wait a millisecond, then shoot off toward the horizon quickly and smoothly until it was out of sight. It made a very soft "shoop shoop shoop" sound as it went away. I would estimate (knowing that these estimates are full of error) that the relative size of the crescent was about the size of a baseball held at arms length. The whole thing lasted about three seconds, then it was gone.

I suppose I could have seen a spacecraft/time machine/artifact from outer space/another dimension/the future, however, I think the more parsimonious explanation lies in the direction of some kind of military aircraft.

Any thoughts? Anyone else have a strange sighting like this one?
 
Hehe- just this morning. Took me a minute, anyway. Walking to the office in the dark, (about 0630) I saw a bright, irregularly shaped light to the North. First thought, airliner. We are in the flight path for Lambert field. Didn't move though. Very bright, and slightly elongated.
Odd....

Then I realized that the new dorm construction had just installed one of those really big cranes, and this was the marker light on top. The rest of the crane was nearly invisible in the dark.

Without the crane body for reference, I would have said the light was at several thousand feet in altitude.
 
I saw eleven UFOs several years ago. It was night, and we saw a light traveling from one side to the other from our point of view. It was live red below and dark in the upside. It made no sound at all, rectilinear trajectory, uniform velocity. Then 10 more.

What they were? Guess I will never know.
 
I saw a UFO the other day, but it turned out to be a floater on my eye. I guess it doesn't count once I figured out what the distant transluscent disc really was.
 
As a skeptic and debunker of photographs it pains me to say that in 1985 while stationed at Bentwaters RAF in England no less I saw something strange that I have to this day never explained. While on a night shift in the bomb dump I was looking at a crystal clear moonless sky trying to remember my constellations and star names. I saw three bright stars that I couldn't remember seeing before in a perfect triangle directly overhead. I was staring right at them, trying to place them in my memory, when they rotated about three times around the center of the triangle then shot out in three different directions. I followed one to the horizon and by then the other two were gone. I put on my skeptic hat, noted that I was alone, took some notes, and quietly filed it away until I could determine what it was. I could see stars in the triangle and it was about as big as my hand on an outstretched arm. Never did figure it out.

Another time I saw a dark shape, a void against the stars, hovering over the Woodbridge bomb dump on a very dark night. I was driving, slammed on my brakes, and shut off my lights to get a better look. It was a rescue helicopter probably doing some sort of practice as I could make out two men jumping from it on top of a bunker. After that, I could see why locals think UFOs dock there.

By the way, I started many, many rumors about Bentwaters. I've seen a few come back to me but please note that when ever you hear a Bentwaters story most men stationed there made up their own stories just for fun and to see what would stick. Really. I could go on for hours about stuff I personally made up and later read somewhere else. That's what I do. But the story above about the triangles is true, really. Or is it? No, really, it is, forget I said that. It's the only thing I've ever seen that I can't explain.
 
In the woods of New Hampshire, July of 1983, I saw a very large, silent, bright light shoot through the sky. I have no idea what it was.
 
When I was in my mid teens and very much a believer in space aliens and all sorts of woo-woo stuff, I saw a ufo. I was standing in a phone booth (some of you middle-aged people will remember what a phone booth is) and I saw it through the glass door of the booth. It was a cigar-shaped light, hovering over the horizon. I opened the door to take a better look and as I did, it sped away faster that any airplane could have. It disappeared in less than a second.

Years later, I realized that what I was seeing was a glare spot in the glass of the phone booth. When I opened the door and changed the angle of the glass, the position of the spot shifted rapidly until it was no longer visible. But I was a creduloid at the time and I was certain I had seen evidence of alien visitation.
 
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I was out in the bush in New South Wales one winter. Freezing cold, and looking for the path that would lead from the scrub up to the house, there were about seven of us walking along.

Ahead, a green light came down from the sky at a relatively fast rate. It dipped into the trees and illuminated the very tops of them, and I admit I was waiting for a crashing sound. Nothing happened, and the light disappeared.

The entire group stopped, and nobody spoke for a few seconds. Eventually we all high-tailed it to the house. There were various biases in what we saw, but we all agreed that it seemed too slow and too big for a flare, and the lack of any noise (and slow speed) indicated it wasn't anything like a meteorite or something 'solid'.

Personally, I still think it may have been a flare. There was no reason for anybody to be around, as we were on a large private property in the bush. But of all rationalisations, I'm willing to accept that one over all else, and put the relatively slow speed and size down to misjudgement.

Athon
 
When I was in college, my roommates and I rented the ground floor of an old house that had been converted into apartments. Since we were on the ground floor, the front porch was ours. One night, after consuming several alcoholic beverages, I was on the porch smoking a cigarette before going to bed. I looked up and saw what looked to be a metallic gold disc hovering in the air and wobbling around. For a few seconds, my mind jumped to alien spacecraft. Skepticism kicked in, and I decided this (probably) wasn't the case. I kept staring at it for a few minutes. I could not tell how high it was, though it appeared to be extremely high up. After giving up hope of figuring out what it was or that it was going to go away, I finally went to bed.

The next day, when I went outside, I looked in the direction this object had been to see if there was anything there. It turns out someone had let go of one of the helium balloons with the silver metallic back. It had gotten caught in the power lines and the gold light coming from it the night before had been the reflection of the street light on the balloon. I felt like an idiot for even considering the alien possibility.
 
Starthinker said:
I saw three bright stars that I couldn't remember seeing before in a perfect triangle directly overhead. I was staring right at them, trying to place them in my memory, when they rotated about three times around the center of the triangle then shot out in three different directions. I followed one to the horizon and by then the other two were gone. I put on my skeptic hat, noted that I was alone, took some notes, and quietly filed it away until I could determine what it was. I could see stars in the triangle and it was about as big as my hand on an outstretched arm. Never did figure it out.
Click to expand...

Sounds like noss triad satellites to me.

Afaik, they're some sort of top secret spy satellites that occasionally come together to form a close triangle, do some of their work, and then separate.

here's some info about em:
On three consecutive nights during the Starfest star party in 1996, a formation of 3 unblinking starlight objects in a flattened triangular configuration was seen cruising across the star fields by dozens of observers. Veteran stargazers at the meeting had never seen anything like it. A little research following Starfest revealed that although the satellite trio was not well known to astronomers, amateur satellite watchers had been following it for years.

In fact, there are three sets of three satellites travelling in formation - all part of the U.S. Navy's space-borne electronic intelligence system, code named Parcae. Before the code name became known, nominilitary satellite specialists called the satellites NOSS, for Naval Ocean Surveillance System. The U.S. Navy does not officially acknowledge the existence of NOSS, and until the 1996 Starfest sightings, most astronomers had never seen or heard of them.

Each group of 3 NOSS satellites flies at an altitude of 1,100 kilometres in a formation about 100 kilometres across. The satellites track the position, speed and direction of all military ships at sea. They do this by detecting the communication, navigation and weapons-control signals that are emitted almost continuously by naval ships. By measuring the time difference of signal receipt, three satellites in a group can pinpoint the ships much better than one satellite could.

According to Toronto satellite expert Ted Molczan, the NOSS satellites are normally magnitude 4 or 5. The angle of sunlight reflecting off the satellites must be exceptionally favorable for the trio to catch the notice of the casual stargazer.

Terence Dickinson - Editor: SkyNews
Canadian Magazine of Astronomy & Stargazing
http://www.aufosg.com/page31.html
Click to expand...
 
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LTC8K6 said:
The NOSS satellites don't separate though, and 1985 is too early for them.
Click to expand...

I was going to say this, but you beat me to it. And when they seperated they went from directly overhead to the horizon in less than a second. I could only follow one, by the time I tried to catch the others they were gone. I'm a bit of a satellite watcher and even make it a point to spot an Iridium Flare once a week or so (http://www.heavens-above.com/main.asp?Loc=Mason+City&Lat=43.154&Lng=-93.201&TZ=CST) so I know from satellites. They were still for about 5 minutes from the time I spotted them to the time they circled then seperated, that's why I was trying to place them in a constellation, but they didn't fit any that I remembered. I don't know what it was, just that I know I saw it. I even was calm enough to take notes after, size, direction, time, viewing conditions. I still have that little notebook somewhere. Not trying to prove anything, I'm the biggest skeptic there is, I'm just saying I saw it.
 
More on NOSS

From //satobs.org/noss.html:

(Put an "http:" in front of that URL, the forum only lets you post URL's after you've made 15 posts for some reason unknown to me.)

"The recently de-classified Program Poppy launched NOSS precursors. The final launch, in 1971, orbited two pairs of satellites operating within the same orbital plane. Neither pair remains in formation today.

Eight 1st generation NOSS triplets were orbited between 1976 and 1987, one of which remains in formation.

Three 2nd generation NOSS triplets were orbited between 1990 and 1996, all of which remain in formation.

The 3rd generation NOSS are the first to employ only two satellites. They made their debut in September 2001, followed by a second launch in December 2003, and a third in February 2005."

This site also has some interesting info about how the satellites stay together (thrusters) and how they are launched into orbit. Perhaps a combination of these events is what Starthinker saw.
 
More on me

As for my own sighting, sometimes I think it might be similar to what Tricky saw - a reflection. In this case, a car headlight off of my glasses. As I moved my head, the reflection appeared to shoot off toward the horizon. The sound could have been car tires crunching on the gravel road at a distance. Perhaps. But I still don't know.

The motive behind this post was to see if perfectly sane, rational, skeptical people (like myself) have seen things in the sky they can't identify. Sometimes people were able to figure out what it was, sometimes not. If we are puzzled by these things, I can see why irrational, non-skeptical people go off the deep end when they have a similar experience.

Keep the stories coming.

I have one more to add:

I was in a remote, polar region in the late 80's. It was daytime (aka "summer") and the sun was shining brightly in a beautiful blue sky. Visibility was excellent. Nothing around but miles of dazzling white ice and snow. Another guy and I were outside when we looked at the horizon and saw what appeared to be a white sheet hanging from the sky. It didn't move, and we puzzled about what this was. It appeared to be a few hundred feet away or so, but we couldn't see any strings or wires holding it up, and we couldn't think about why anyone would do this, or how it was being suspended, or anything. We slowly realized we were looking at a contrail from the plane that had left several hours ago. The contrail was actually very far away, but the lack of surface features made us unable to judge distance. Even after we had figured it out, I still could not make my mind percieve it at the correct distance. A few minutes later, I viewed the contrail from a different location and I could see that it was just a far away line of white cloud.
 
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