Flying Object Timelapse - Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

Mick West

Administrator
Staff member

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYyg446VKlU&feature=youtu.be


CAN YOU IDENTIFY THIS FLYING OBJECT IN THE TIMELAPSE VIDEO??? This occurred at 10:20pm to 10:23pm on 1/7/2021 facing SSE in the sky. The object was seen for a total of 166 seconds or just under 3 minutes total. Story behind the video - I spent a night at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse shooting time lapse photos in order to create an up coming video. While I was looking through my footage I realized there was something in the video that I could not explain. Its much larger than your typical plane appears, and its moving way faster than clouds. Can you explain what this object could be? The object appears at 10 seconds, and lasts a total of 16 frames, or 176 seconds (11 second interval X 16 frames) 176 seconds total. Each frame represents a 10 second photograph. The object was visible for just under 3 minutes total so I doubt it’s a meteor, shooting star as those typically only last a few seconds. What are your thoughts?
Content from External Source
2021-01-15_15-53-24.jpg

Oddly periodic tail - might be from the frame blending software? Possibly a plane with contrail? Seems too dim to be something burning up.
 
10:20PM EST on 1/7/2021 is 3:20AM UTC on 1/8/2021, looking SE. There don't appear to be any planes that would cross that much sky in three minutes in view.

2021-01-15_16-13-42.jpg
 
I notice that immediately after the light tracks from screen right to left, terminating around the base of the lighthouse, the bottom of the lighthouse is illuminated by something -- car headlights? Something else? That timing may be coincidental, but strikes me as suggestive,though I have no mechanism I can think of the explain a link between them. Offered in case it suggests something to somebody else.

Edited to remove several typos.
 
At about 1:26, a blob of diffuse light tracks along the tree line towards the lighthouse from the left. Abut the time the blob reaches the lighthouse, the lighthouse is illuminated by a flash from the left. It looks to me like headlights of cars entering/leaving the car park may be causing reflections somehow. I wonder if the shot was for some reason through glass, and we're seeing reflections? Or is there any way unseen headlights or something would create reflections in the lens?
 
At about 1:26, a blob of diffuse light tracks along the tree line towards the lighthouse from the left. Abut the time the blob reaches the lighthouse, the lighthouse is illuminated by a flash from the left. It looks to me like headlights of cars entering/leaving the car park may be causing reflections somehow. I wonder if the shot was for some reason through glass, and we're seeing reflections? Or is there any way unseen headlights or something would create reflections in the lens?
but the blob light seems to go behind the lighthouse.
 
but the blob light seems to go behind the lighthouse.
So does the UFO. That would seem to rule out reflections, unless somebody can think of something that I can't. But it is possibly significant that we have several light effects in the sky that track towards the lighthouse, associated with the lighthouse being illuminated more or less as they seem to pass behind it. Might be coincidence, but it happens with both weird light blobs.

I also notice what I missed before -- the guy over to the left messing with what I assume are lights for photography. Since he is in frame (and headlights are not) he might be worth looking at as a source of reflections or lighting effects. I was thinking headlights because cars turning into parking lots or backing out of parking spaces will track their headlights, possibly creating the tracking across the shot we see from the lights in the sky.
 
So does the UFO. That would seem to rule out reflections, unless somebody can think of something that I can't. But it is possibly significant that we have several light effects in the sky that track towards the lighthouse, associated with the lighthouse being illuminated more or less as they seem to pass behind it. Might be coincidence, but it happens with both weird light blobs.

I also notice what I missed before -- the guy over to the left messing with what I assume are lights for photography. Since he is in frame (and headlights are not) he might be worth looking at as a source of reflections or lighting effects. I was thinking headlights because cars turning into parking lots or backing out of parking spaces will track their headlights, possibly creating the tracking across the shot we see from the lights in the sky.
well if there is fog or thick air, then headlights do kinda show in the sky. but the stars look pretty clear to me all the way down to the ground. ?
the lighthouse parking lot is to the left there and its a circle driveway.

(i'm having flashbacks of FE laser tests and bendy light... hhmmm)
 
Last edited:
Oddly periodic tail - might be from the frame blending software?

Definitely looks like the composite stacking of multiple frames together - shutter open for several seconds, closes briefly, open for several seconds, closes briefly, ... . The lighthouse itself shows breaks in its illumination pattern too. The human is *definitely* stacked too - I counted 3 of him in individual video frames many times.
Actual source video would be a better way of evaluating the evidence within.
 
Actual source video would be a better way of evaluating the evidence within.

Which raises an interesting (to a new member of the site), meta-question - in what situations can the debunker just say "this is obviously the product of image manipulation, and thus isn't evidence for anything apart from deliberate manipulation"?
 
Could it be rocket/satellite debris re-entering the atmosphere? As someone pointed out already, 3 minutes seems too long for a meteor to be visible, but maybe rocket debris would be moving more slowly than a meteor. Just a suggestion.
 
Strongly resembles a rocket launch. Is it possible the photographer has the wrong time frame and captured the SpaceX Turksat 5A launch which lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 9:15 pm EST that evening? This really looks like a rocket plume in the upper atmosphere to me.

 
Shouldn't the light from the lighthouse make stars impossible to see?

We're at a lower declination than the trees seem to be, and it's not illuminating the trees at all. The lobes a lighthouse throws out are designed to be quite narrow to minimise waste.
 
Oddly periodic tail - might be from the frame blending software?
2021-01-16_10-29-32.jpg
The dark bands are from the the 1 second cycling of the camera between each 10 second exposure.

The similar dark band [Edit: in a single frame], maybe two, is a little puzzling, and seems to indicate two different sources of light, like (speculation) an aerodynamic contrail followed by a late-forming exhaust contrail.
2021-01-16_10-34-04.jpg

I know I'm a contrail guy, but the horizontal path, the consistent shape, and the lack of bright streaks does (at least initially) make it look like a contrail to me. But then there's also no nav lights, and why is it so brightly lit?

If it's a rocket launch, then is there a portion of the launch that's so consistent for two minutes?
 
Last edited:
this pic has a dark line in what seems like the same spot. does that mean anything? it is known to be haunted.. a ghost plane?1610823550504.png
Copyright: Alistair Nicol
 
I think that the trail is an artefact of a long (10 sec) exposure and the frame blending software. Each dash has a similar shape and does not move, just vanes and disappears after a few frames. The object could be not far away, illuminated by the lighthouse and/or another light source and flying in a straight line, like a small flock of sea birds.
 
Is it possible the photographer has the wrong time frame and captured the SpaceX Turksat 5A launch which lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 9:15 pm EST that evening?
The night sky behind the lighthouse matches the reported time with Sirius near the centre and Procyon in the upper left corner in the beginning of the video.
 
What am I seing with the bright streaks marked here by red dots. I don't see them in freezing video frames. Stars that blur more in the composite than they do in a single frame?

Capture.JPG
 
What am I seing with the bright streaks marked here by red dots. I don't see them in freezing video frames. Stars that blur more in the composite than they do in a single frame?

Capture.JPG
He's blended together all the frames, but just in the path of the object, so the stars in the trail trace out 16x as long as the stars outside the trail.
 
I've tested my hypothesis of the object being a flock of birds on Google Earth.
Cape Hatteras trail 1.jpg
Cape Hatteras trail 2.jpg

The birds flying from the lagoon to the ocean at the height of the lighthouse and about 1000 ft behind it at a leisure speed of less than 20 mph would be on a right track for about a right time. At 10 sec exposure, the images of individual birds in a flock would merge in one smeared dash, similar to the dashes of the 'trail' in the video. Interestingly, there is a hint of V formation in the shape of each dash. The longer 'trail' could be an artefact of the frame blending software adding the fading images of previous dashes at the end of the new one.

The question is whether the birds would catch enough light from the lighthouse at this distance to leave a visible trail on the photos or not.
 
I had a closer look at the stars and unless I made a mistake with timezone conversions, or my planetarium program messed up somewhere, I believe it is more likely that the video was filmed an hour earlier than stated, at around 9:20 pm local time instead of 10:20.

This is a crop of the lower right part of the video, with three stars labelled.
crop-annotated.jpg

This is the same crop, overlaid with a corresponding simulated view of the sky from Cape Hatteras, on Jan 7 at 21:20 local time.

2120.jpg
Centered on Pi Puppis, a close enough match I would say despite slightly different scales (I did my best, hah!) and alignment issues due to the horizon not being perfectly level in the video. Note especially the angle between Pi Puppis and Nu Puppis.

Now take a look at the same crop, overlaid as before but with the simulated view from an hour later, 7 Jan at 22:20 local time.
2220.jpg
Note how the angle between Pi Puppis and Nu Puppis is radically different.

If someone could confirm this, that'd be nice. As I said, I'm not entirely sure I didn't make a mistake somewhere along the way.

For what it's worth, if this really was taken around 21:20, that would put it 5 - 10 minutes past the launch of SpaceX's Turksat 5A mission. This is a screenshot from the webcast showing the trajectory. If I had to guess I would put this image a few minutes past the object's appearance in the video.
launch.jpg

It is quite some ways from the camera's location though given its easterly heading. Launches into an ISS-like orbit head out to the NW NE, much closer to the eastern seaboard. Maybe some could make some calculations on how far above the horizon the rocket would have appeared from Cape Hatteras? I haven't got the time right now to do so myself.

EDIT: If you want to know how high above the horizon the object was in this crop, it moves past Nu Puppis, which was at an elevation of 6°12" at 21:20 and 9°58" at 22:20.

EDIT2: Actually, I'll do one quick calculation. I measured the downrange distance between Cape Hatteras and the launch trajectory as about 750 km / 465 mi by the time it would have entered into the camera's view. To appear 6° above the horizon, it would have had to be at an altitude of about 125 km / 78 mi. According to the info in the launch webcast, the rocket passed this altitude 4:15 min after launch, or at 21:19:15 local time.
 
Last edited:
For what it's worth, if this really was taken around 21:20, that would put it 5 - 10 minutes past the launch of SpaceX's Turksat 5A mission. This is a screenshot from the webcast showing the trajectory. If I had to guess I would put this image a few minutes past the object's appearance in the video.
Edit: the post that I cite above appears to be removed, so I repeat the earlier post to which my reply was actually written:
Strongly resembles a rocket launch. Is it possible the photographer has the wrong time frame and captured the SpaceX Turksat 5A launch which lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 9:15 pm EST that evening? This really looks like a rocket plume in the upper atmosphere to me.

Yes, on a second glance, the stars match one hour earlier time better, when simulated from the right location:
Screenshot 2021-01-16 at 17.04.04.png

Screenshot 2021-01-17 at 16.03.31.png
I can't find the actual track of the SpaceX launch, but modelled the path of Stage 2 from the amimation:
Screenshot 2021-01-17 at 15.52.15.png
The arch of great circle at 166 km above the ground does match the trail:
Cape Hatteras SpaceX Step 2 track.jpg
 
Last edited:
Maybe someone could make some calculations on how far above the horizon the rocket would have appeared from Cape Hatteras?

I haven't done that, but the distance from Cape Hatteras to Cape Canaveral is about 1000 km, and from that distance about 70 km of altitude would be 'hidden' below the observer's horizon. The lowest earth orbits are much higher than that (about 300 km), so there is plenty of leeway to play with. As the rocket motors appear to be still burning (assuming the object is a rocket), it is presumably still on its way up to its orbital height. (Unless what we are seeing is a booster on its way down.) At least it seems a possibility worth exploring by someone who knows more about rockets than I do. I don't even know whether a rocket exhaust would be visible at that distance.

[edit: I was writing this before I saw Trailspotter's latest comment]
 
Edit: the post that I cite above appears to be removed, so I repeat the earlier post to which my reply was actually written:
It was auto-hidden because I'm a new member, then it got approved and I appended an edit, which by the look of things made it hidden again. :p I'm sure it'll be resolved in a bit.

The edit I made was a rough calculation I made of how high above the horizon the rocket would have appeared in the video. Looking at your Google Earth image, it seems we took two different paths to reach a similar conclusion. Nice!
 
I haven't done that, but the distance from Cape Hatteras to Cape Canaveral is about 1000 km, and from that distance about 70 km of altitude would be 'hidden' below the observer's horizon. The lowest earth orbits are much higher than that (about 300 km), so there is plenty of leeway to play with. As the rocket motors appear to be still burning (assuming the object is a rocket), it is presumably still on its way up to its orbital height. (Unless what we are seeing is a booster on its way down.) At least it seems a possibility worth exploring by someone who knows more about rockets than I do. I don't even know whether a rocket exhaust would be visible at that distance.

[edit: I was writing this before I saw Trailspotter's latest comment]
It is 1000 km but that would be looking in a southwesterly direction. The camera is pointed SE though (the lighthouse is at 145°), with the right edge almost straight south. Distance is a few 100 k's less that way.
 
  • Flash pattern: 1 second flash, 6.5 second ellipse

That accords with what I have seen elsewhere, example:
constantly

How often is the light rotation at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse?


The light at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse flashes every 7.5 seconds.
https://www.outerbanks.com/cape-hatteras-lighthouse.html

Worth noting that the light is constantly on, the flash pattern is caused by rotating the lamps/reflectors. So there is SOME leaked light from the lamps even outside of the bright reflected beam (or at least there was some years back last time I saw it.)

Still, if whatever created the blur was being illuminated by ambient light leaking from the lighthouse, you'd expect it to become much brighter every 7.5 seconds as the beam passes. And it would have to be very close to the lighthouse.

PS: Just thought to pull up a marine chart for Cape Hatteras, which confirms a 7.5 second flash for the lighthouse.

Capture.JPG
 
I have deduced a likely segment (red) of the SpaceX Stage 2 track between 9:20 PM and 9:23 PM EST from the animation in the video. As the first available point is at T = 00:08:11 = 9:23:11, I backtracked about 1,000 km approximately corresponding to 3 minutes of the flight.
Screenshot 2021-01-17 at 21.17.14.png

Cape Hatteras SpaceX Stage2 track 2.jpg

The location of this segment on Google Earth is fully consistent with the object being the second stage of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Cape Hatteras SpaceX Stage2 track 1.jpg
 
The location of this segment on Google Earth is fully consistent with the object being the second stage of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Yeah, that looks like a very good match.

What might be interesting, I found this video of an older SpaceX launch, SES-9 from March 2016. What's interesting about it is that it followed a similar trajectory (this being another geostationary satellite launch), was launched after nightfall, and that there's ground video footage from the same general area as Cape Hatteras.

This is the launch trajectory, taken from
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIkPP2LM8DU

ses9tr.jpg

This is the view from a ground observer saying they're based in Wilmington, NC (
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwKO9Lv7Cfk
). This is 250 km / 155 mi southwest of Cape Hatteras and roughly 130 km / 80 mi closer to the rocket's ground track. Note that the sun had only recently set for ground observers and was still above the horizon from the rocket's POV, which is why you can make out the first stage and the fairings. In the Cape Hatteras video, these would have been invisible since the sun was already 50 degrees below the horizon at that time (if they would have even appeared above the horizon in the first place from that more northerly location).

ses9gr.jpg


I also synced the videos up to the best of my abilities. You can watch them side-by-side here: https://viewsync.net/watch?v=sIkPP2LM8DU&t=820&v=KwKO9Lv7Cfk&t=57
Starts a few seconds before fairing separation.
 
Theory: Very distant aircraft seen through very heavy haze (typical of coastal areas) so all the nav lights blend into a blur. Be interesting to see what the color spectrum is.

I don't know if it's possible to extract color spectrum of the blur from the video, but are there sharp reds or greens from nav lights, and lots of frequencies/colors typical of aircraft strobes?

Edit: Based on Micks single frame images, looking at the stars there seems to be some vibration of the camera that could contribute to just a very blurry image of an aircraft at night.
(Other minor edits for typos, clarification.)

Edit 2: Thought object might possibly be lit from below by reflection of moonlight off of water surface. But moon phase was waning crescent on 01/07/21 at Cape Hatteras and was below the horizon at the time:
https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/@4470221
 
Last edited:
What might be interesting, I found this video of an older SpaceX launch, SES-9 from March 2016. What's interesting about it is that it followed a similar trajectory (this being another geostationary satellite launch), was launched after nightfall, and that there's ground video footage from the same general area as Cape Hatteras.
This is a good find. It shows how the Stage 2 active flight looks at a similar distance from NC. At a longer exposure its shevron-like glowing shape would blur into a longer dash, similar to those in your time-lapse. As the Stage 2 accelerates (from 12,000 km/h to 27,000 km/h in those three minutes) while moving away from the camera at the same time, the apparent lengths of 10-sec dashes remain fairly constant.

The Stage 2 altitude also increased from 145 km to 165 km at the same time interval, making its visible path from Cape Hatteras more horizontal than my level-flight approximation above. After turning on the night sky on Google Earth, my approximation also goes slightly higher relative the stars, than the object does in the time-lapse:

Screenshot 2021-01-18 at 11.36.49.png
 
Last edited:
Theory: Very distant aircraft seen through very heavy haze (typical of coastal areas) so all the nav lights blend into a blur. Be interesting to see what the color spectrum is.

I don't know if it's possible to extract color spectrum of the blur from the video, but are there sharp reds or greens from nav lights, and lots of frequencies/colors typical of aircraft strobes?

Edit: Based on Micks single frame images, looking at the stars there seems to be some vibration of the camera that could contribute to just a very blurry image of an aircraft at night.
(Other minor edits for typos, clarification.)

Edit 2: Thought object might possibly be lit from below by reflection of moonlight off of water surface. But moon phase was waning crescent on 01/07/21 at Cape Hatteras and was below the horizon at the time:
https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/@4470221
Edit 3: Note btw... Billy Mitchel Airport, due WSW of the Lighthouse... small landing strip owned by the Park Service. Be a nice experience, camp on the barrier island, take a night flight out over the water or just avoid traffic on the way to camping.
Link to googlemaps, Billy Mitchel Airport:

https://goo.gl/maps/j6xRDzNDAKrtepYM6

Edit 4: LAST ONE (honest! For now ;-) NEW Theory: Obj was a general aviation aircraft, no transponder (so it wouldn't show up on FlightRadar, FlightAware, etc) minimal lights, flying out of Billy Mitchel Airport. Trying to look it up, but there are FAA areas with relaxed rules for General Aviation. I would think the area off of the Park Services airport there would be one. Editorializing: And having flown a little bit, as a passenger, being up over the ocean on moonless night, and close to the lights on shore would be a blast.
 
Last edited:
Edit 4: LAST ONE (honest! For now ;-) NEW Theory: Obj was a general aviation aircraft, no transponder (so it wouldn't show up on FlightRadar, FlightAware, etc) minimal lights, flying out of Billy Mitchel Airport. Trying to look it up, but there are FAA areas with relaxed rules for General Aviation. I would think the area off of the Park Services airport there would be one. Editorializing: And having flown a little bit, as a passenger, being up over the ocean on moonless night, and close to the lights on shore would be a blast.
I've looked into this possibility before and quickly discarded it, as there were very few flights in and out of Billy Mitchel Airport this year and none on that particular day: https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KHSE/departures. Also, my Google Earth simulation showed that such a plane would be heading far into the ocean to match the visible track. I've opted for a flock of seabirds hypothesis instead (see above), but discarded it too due to the lack of suitable light sources on the ground that would have lit the birds all way along the entire track.

After the correction of the time of the observation to 9:20-9:23 PM local time, I turned my effort to modelling the track of SpaceX Falcon 9 launch on Google Earth and found that it indeed was a very probable culprit. Further analysis by the video author @Easy Muffin and myself concluded that it is almost certainly was the object in the video.
 
Last edited:
I've looked into this possibility before and quickly discarded it, as there were very few flights in and out flights in Billy Mitchel Airport this year and none on that particular day: https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KHSE/departures. Also, my Google Earth simulation showed that such a plane would be heading far into the ocean to match the visible track. I've opted for a flock of seabirds hypothesis instead (see above), but discarded it too due to lack of suitable light sources on the ground that would have lit the birds all way along the entire track.

After the correction of the time of the observation to 9:20-9:23 PM local time, I turned my effort to modelling the track of SpaceX Falcon 9 launch on Google Earth and found that it indeed was a very probable culprit. Further analysis by the video author @Easy Muffin and myself concluded that it is almost certainly was the object in the video.

Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply!
That's pretty amazing work. I did scan through the posts you mentioned but didn't read them thoroughly. (Rookie mistake on my part... get a theory, follow the confirmation bias to a conclusion.)
 
This is fairly constant in my books. They would have shrank much more, if it were a distant plane or a satellite travelling with a fairly constant speed

Distance or speed are irrelevant, all that matters is change of distance. Approaching, wider angle, longer dashes; retreating, narrower angles, shorter dashes, and of course, both, both.
 
Distance or speed are irrelevant, all that matters is change of distance. Approaching, wider angle, longer dashes; retreating, narrower angles, shorter dashes, and of course, both, both.
I am a keen plane spotter and aware of this. The initial point of this digression was about two opposite effects partly cancelling each other: 10-second segments of the rocket track are getting longer and longer but also farther and farther away.
As the Stage 2 accelerates (from 12,000 km/h to 27,000 km/h in those three minutes) while moving away from the camera at the same time, the apparent lengths of 10-sec dashes remain fairly constant.
 
Back
Top