UFO near stirling

Kilted

Student
Kilted
Joined
Apr 19, 2005
Messages
28
Today at about 1635 i was looking out my window at Stirling Uni and saw something i could not explain. The sky was blue and there was no discernable wind (on the ground anyway). What i saw was this: A white sphere about the size of a star was motionless in the sky. I watched it for about 5 mins in which time it passed across the sky from roughly east to west (would have to look at a map to be more exact) I got one of my friends through who also saw it. After 5 mins i got bored and went into the kitchen for some food.

Im just wondering what you think this was.
 
If you can visually resolve star sized lights as spheres, I know some astronomers who would like to hire you.

So , we have a sphere / point of light, stationary but crossing the sky from east to west.

Possibly a nav light on a plane headed from Edinburgh to Glasgow?
 
Balloon.

Wind can be zero at ground level but significant higher up, and if the balloon was high enough it would explain long transit time across sky.
 
Kilted said:
Today at about 1635 i was looking out my window at Stirling Uni and saw something i could not explain. The sky was blue and there was no discernable wind (on the ground anyway). What i saw was this: A white sphere about the size of a star was motionless in the sky. I watched it for about 5 mins in which time it passed across the sky from roughly east to west (would have to look at a map to be more exact) I got one of my friends through who also saw it. After 5 mins i got bored and went into the kitchen for some food.

Im just wondering what you think this was.
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Just about anything. I am curiious if the motion from east to west was slow or not? When you state this, did you mean it went to the western horizon or that it showed some slow motion towards the west. How far it was (angular distance) from the sun (east or western side) could also resolve the issue. It sounds like a possible daylight sighting of Venus, which is possible in a clear sky but that is only a guess. Next time you have a UFO "sighting" I suggest you provide elevation angle and azimuth for begin and end for starters. Angular distance traveled and time duration could add to the solution. Like so many UFO reports, this is just another story that may or may not be resolvable.
 
You state:

Afternoon, clear blue sky, calm. White spere. Starsize is impossible, because stars are points, so I assume small.

Moves slowly across sky.

By far most likely: Balloon. Probably toy balloon, but could be weather balloon, too.

Hans
 
Ok sorry for the delay in this reply but the pub called my name last night and who was i to resist? :D

Originally posted by Nucular
Sounds like a satellite maybe? Did it change direction or speed at any point?
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Nope


Originally posed by Soapy Sam
Possibly a nav light on a plane headed from Edinburgh to Glasgow?
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Ok it was definately not a plane. I know this as there was a plane in the air at the same time taking off. This plane was clearly visible. I cant remember if it had its nav lights on or not but if it did then they didnt blind me to the shape of the plane.


Originally posted by dann
Motionless and passing across the sky???
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It appeared to be motionless, but as time passed it travelled across the sky.

Originally posed by edthedoc
Balloon.
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I thought this was a strong possibility. It is hard to judge scale and altitude with no reference points.


Just about anything. I am curiious if the motion from east to west was slow or not? When you state this, did you mean it went to the western horizon or that it showed some slow motion towards the west. How far it was (angular distance) from the sun (east or western side) could also resolve the issue. It sounds like a possible daylight sighting of Venus, which is possible in a clear sky but that is only a guess. Next time you have a UFO "sighting" I suggest you provide elevation angle and azimuth for begin and end for starters. Angular distance traveled and time duration could add to the solution. Like so many UFO reports, this is just another story that may or may not be resolvable.
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The object moved from the east towards the west. If you can link me to a site that has a map of stirling i will be able to mark on it, or at least give grid references of the path it followed. Also how can i measure the angle? I can remember where it appeared in the sky and where i got bored of watching it. The time was roughly 5 mins.
 
Which direction were you looking in? If you're not sure, uou can tell by the Sun. If you were looking South, the Sun would have been to your right: if West, it would have been directly in front of you; if East or North, it would not have been in your field of vision.
You say this object moved across the sky. Across the whole sky, or just a part? You can give us a very approximate idea of how far it moved by holding up your finger at arms-length - one fingerwidth is roughly 1 degree of sky.
Were there clouds in the sky at the time? Moving clouds can fool your sense of motion - it's very easy to think that an object in the sky, with clouds nearby and no other visual reference, is moving when it's not.
 
It definately moved. At first it was easily viewable out of my window and after 5 mins i had to crane my neck round to see it.
Also the sun was not in my field of vision - i have looked at a map, not a very good one, but i was looking directly east - this means that the object started due east of me and finished north of me(where the wall of the building i was in made it too much of an effort to follow). I would say it was was on a course of about 300 degrees. I still dont get how to work out how many degrees of sky it went through. I did stand with my arm out but from where i saw it first to where i saw it last was many, many fingers and far too difficult to judge accurately.
 
Kilted said:
The object moved from the east towards the west. If you can link me to a site that has a map of stirling i will be able to mark on it, or at least give grid references of the path it followed. Also how can i measure the angle? I can remember where it appeared in the sky and where i got bored of watching it. The time was roughly 5 mins.
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An object in the sky can not be plotted on a map of Stirling since you do not know how far away the "UFO" was. Measurements of elevation angles and azimuth have to do with understanding your location. Azimuth is measured from due north (north being 0 degrees) in a clockwise direction. East would be 90 degrees, south 180, and west 270. Elevation angles are estimated based on how high in the sky they are. Directly overhead would be 90 degrees and the horizon would be 0 degrees. Halfway up would be 45 degrees. Therefore, if you saw an object about 1/3 from the horizon to the zenith (overhead), it would have an elevation angle of 30 degrees. Using this system, you could provide valuable data on your sighting. All too often, such data is never given or never obtained in sightings. As a result, any identification becomes increasingly difficult.
 
You can use your body as a crude measuring tool, because (if you are fully grown) its proportions don't change suddenly and you never forget to take it with you.

One arm pointing in front and one to the side gives a right angle, horizontally.

One straight up and one forward gives the same in the vertical plane.

45 degrees is easy to estimate. (Don't do this in Germany, where it can get you arrested.)

Outstretched finger and thumb, clenched fist, upraised thumb. All, when held at arms length cover angles between 2 and 30 degrees. You have to calibrate this for yourself, against a protractor. (Point a laser pointer at a wall and use a protractor to test the angle. After a few minutes practice you can be surprisingly accurate. It comes in handy for a lot of estimating jobs as well as for identifying UFOs.

As for your sighting, I'd go along with the toy balloon guess. Whatever, if it was big and you could see aircraft flying out of Edinburgh, then Air Traffic Control there knew about it, so it was something they were happy to ignore.
 
Rite I took pictures out of my window and marked on them where the object appeared and where i stopped watching it. The time to cross that distance was about 5 minutes. Hopefully the angle can be worked out from this but im not really sure how.
 
Kilted said:
Rite I took pictures out of my window and marked on them where the object appeared and where i stopped watching it. The time to cross that distance was about 5 minutes. Hopefully the angle can be worked out from this but im not really sure how.
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That rules out a daytime sighting of Venus. It could have been a balloon or very high aircraft that only appeared to be a small dot. More information would be needed. Wind data for the date in question could rule out a balloon. Flight patterns for all aircraft on the date in question would also be required.
 
Some weather data for 1600 and 1700 on the 22nd:

http://www.metoffice.com/education/archive/uk/observation_55.html

http://www.metoffice.com/education/archive/uk/observation_54.html

From the Glasgow and Edinburgh data, it looks like the wind changed in central Scotland over that hour from the south/southwest to the southwest/west.

So this suggests that the object moving from east to west had the wind hitting it from roughly the southwest and it wasn't moving with the wind.

That's only ground data, I'd guess, though. Higher up, the wind direction could be different.
 
Perhaps a manmade satellite reflecting sunlight. I've seen the same kind of thing when I was a child, and that was my first hunch when I saw it.
 
Satellites either don't move at all, or they move faster than this. Hard to spot in daylight too. Anyone checked ISS orbits for the day in question?
 
wipeout said:
Some weather data for 1600 and 1700 on the 22nd:

http://www.metoffice.com/education/archive/uk/observation_55.html

http://www.metoffice.com/education/archive/uk/observation_54.html

From the Glasgow and Edinburgh data, it looks like the wind changed in central Scotland over that hour from the south/southwest to the southwest/west.

So this suggests that the object moving from east to west had the wind hitting it from roughly the southwest and it wasn't moving with the wind.

That's only ground data, I'd guess, though. Higher up, the wind direction could be different.
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Actually you gave data for the 23rd but the 22nd is similar with winds from the south and southwest in Glasgow and Edinburgh. However, Leuchers, which is to the northeast of Stirling had winds from the east and southeast during this time period so we really can not say the exact wind direction for the time in question. Additionally, you are correct that winds aloft could differ from winds at ground level.

The rough angular speed from the photographs may have been as much as 10 deg/min. When I did some basic computations of a 10mph wind driven balloon a mile up, the angular rates came out to be about 10-20 degrees/minute depending on the elevation angle (which would determine how far the balloon was away). If you half the wind speed, the rates become 5-10 deg/min or make the balloon 2 miles high, it also changes the rates to less than 10 deg/min. These all approximate the description given. Additionally, for the size to be about 2' of arc across (about the size one might expect would be possible to pick out of a blue sky), the balloon would range between 5 and 25 feet across.

Sounding data would be necessary to see if it could be a balloon or not.
 
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