Glowing orange orb with visible tech/structures/lights inside

[substantials]

This is an interesting one,

Source:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NiDQxQ01oQ


Orb giving off a striking orange glow, guy zooms in and it shows some sort of structure within.
Lights blinking around inside of it, almost looks like sparks, some sort of core.
Glows very bright orange, even in the daylight

Has a toroidal shape to it
Some sort of wispiness/vapor, like its not entirely solid
I've stabilized a portion of the video.

edges reminiscent of the suns corona, wispy discharges around it
never seen anything like it.

 

[Mendel]

as a 3D shape, it kinda looks like a hot air balloon with a gondola/basket hanging below it, and that's where the blinking lights are (and possibly on some of the ropes).

but I really have no clue what it is

 

[jarlrmai]

Looks like a Chinese Lantern seen from directly below

 

[substantials]

but I really have no clue what it is

I dont either mendel, sure is strange isn't it. I've never seen a hot air balloon that looks wispy around the edges and glows like the sun in the daylight.

Looks like a Chinese Lantern seen from directly below

I know thats a popular bunk for 'orange object in sky', but I think theres more going on in this video thats unexplainable - to be able to conclude its a chinese lantern this time.

Some questions:

What is all of the mechanical motion and oscillating?
Why the toroidal shape? like an apple cross section.
Why the wispy-ness to it, not appearing entirely solid in appearance.
What are the sparks/lights inside of it?
If this is a lantern,
Wouldnt the center where the fuel is burning be the brightest?
Why does it appear that there are structures right above where the fuel would be in a lantern, wouldnt the fuel burn that?
Why are there lights that seem to appear above and below where the fuel would be in a lantern?



Can you answer these?

 

[Mendel]

What is all of the mechanical motion and oscillating?

Could you please explain what you identify as mechanical motion or oscillations?

Why the toroidal shape? like an apple cross section.

Could you please explain what you think a toroidal shape is? (It is usually described as similar to a donut.)

Why the wispy-ness to it, not appearing entirely solid in appearance.

Could you please explain why you think this object is not solid?

What are the sparks/lights inside of it?

It looks to me like the "sparks" are white LEDs blinking at fixed positions; sparks are typically more orange.
These blinks are all similarly bright, of similar duration, and if you timed them you'd probably find a rhythm to them.

If this is a lantern,
Wouldnt the center where the fuel is burning be the brightest?

Not if the platform for the fuel obscures it.

Why does it appear that there are structures right above where the fuel would be in a lantern, wouldnt the fuel burn that?

Could you please indicate which structures you are referring to?

Why are there lights that seem to appear above and below where the fuel would be in a lantern?

I don't understand how you determine "above" and "below", or which lights you are referring to here.

 

[substantials]

Could you please explain what you identify as mechanical motion or oscillations?

it looks like its not entirely solid, the lights that are traversing, edge to edge. oscillating, form an X pattern through it. they actually seem to cause disturbances in the shape, little puffs and wisps as it reaches the edges.

Could you please explain what you think a toroidal shape is? (It is usually described as similar to a donut.)

Basically a magnetic field. thats what it reminded me of. (a toroid neednt look like a donut either, it can be nearly spherical and also look like a long circular string (maybe a donut could be baked like that too), its all about the math of the area/volume FYI)

Could you please explain why you think this object is not solid?

The edges appear to be evaporative, the inside looks like its made of a cloud like substance. I cannot explain why it looks like that.

It looks to me like the "sparks" are white LEDs

Why LEDs in particular?

Not if the platform for the fuel obscures it.

Rarely is it obscured viewing a lantern in the sky, flame is usually visible.

I don't understand how you determine "above" and "below", or which lights you are referring to here.

Why would a lantern have these blinking lights at all? especially around burning fuel?

 

[JMartJr]

Looks pretty much like a balloon with some LEDs, as mentioned above, possibly some sort of "hazard flashers." or just decorative. I don't see any motion about from camera shake -- it does not DO anything, does it? I don;t think the structure is within, I think it is hanging under. Or at the least, I'd say it looks as much like something hanging under as it does something internal.

As to

Glows very bright orange, even in the daylight

I'm a bit confused about just how bright the daylight is -- it looks like normal day when zoomed out, but the sky is so dark when zoomed in, I wonder if it is actually not very light, whether we are just after sunset or just before sunrise, and the camera is brightening the image while zoomed out, but does not "feel the need to" when the frame is more full of the bright object -- if so, sunrise/sunset conditions could explain the orange illumination. Folks with camera knowings can speak to whether that makes sense or not.

Has a toroidal shape to it

I don't think so, it looks more like a more-or-less sphere with a basket of payload under it and the sides either emitting or reflecting more light.

Some sort of wispiness/vapor, like its not entirely solid

Gotta disagree with that, too, it looks just like the image is a bit blurry, either with atmospheric blurring at a distance or through imperfect focus.

I've stabilized a portion of the video.

Thanks, that makes it much easier to see what we might be looking at.

With all that in mind, and although I know true UFO fans will hate the cliche, I think this is some sort of weather balloon, which would account for the shape, the payload, possibly the flashing lights, and the distance (altitude) being great enough to allow for atmospheric blur. I don't feel ready to INSIST that's it, yet, but that seems to cover everything we're seeing in the video.

 

[substantials]

Looks pretty much like a balloon with some LEDs

Looks like a glowing sun with a north and south pole and coronal discharge around the edges.
Have to leave for work be back in a bit.
This is a weird one.

 

[Easy Muffin]

This looks like a Project Loon balloon illuminated in a red hue by the rising or setting Sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC

Loon LLC was an Alphabet Inc. subsidiary working on providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The company used high-altitude balloons in the stratosphere at an altitude of 18 km (11 mi) to 25 km (16 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 1 Mbit/s speeds.[1]​[2]​[3]​[4]​ A reference to the balloons used,[1]​ Project Loon began as a research and development project by X (formerly Google X) in 2011, but later spun out into a separate company in July 2018.[5]​ In January 2021, it was announced that the company would be shut down due to lack of profitability.[6]​[7]​[8]​[9]​

The blinking lights are LED strobes on the solar panels placed there as a flight safety feature.

(from https://www.icao.int/SAM/Documents/2016-CRPP4/Peru GREPECAS PPRC-4 brief Jul 16.pdf)

See this for comparison

This is a short video of the evening passage of HBAL744 a Project Loon balloon above the city of Salta in northern Argentina.

The video was taken on January 5, 2020 by Jose Maidana an amateur astronomer using a Hokenn 130/900 eq 2 telescope with a 20mm ocular and the camera of his cellphone.

From the same channel,

Video footage of a project Loon balloon flying above Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais, brazil obtained by Andrews Oliveira on July 9, 2020.

Note the 'missing' strobes here. I suspect they are washed out by the glare of the daytime sky.

 

[JAFO]

Another example of a high altitude balloon sans blinking lights at dusk.

 

[FatPhil]

Why would a lantern have these blinking lights at all? especially around burning fuel?

For the same reason someone might do this:

I've always loved the pictures from sky lantern festivals, with hundreds of floating lanterns lighting up the night sky – and if anyone has ever seen the Disney movie Tangled (with three nieces, we certainly couldn't avoid it), it's hard not to have a soft spot for them. Unfortunately, the aftermath of releasing sky lanterns isn't great for the environment, even using the ones that are labeled as biodegradable. And of course, there's also the risk of them blowing off course and catching something on fire – which is probably why they're not legal in many places, including nearly every US state. But I really wanted to release lanterns at our wedding. Luckily, we're engineers and figured out a work around, using helium balloons and LEDs. In some ways these are even better than the original sky lanterns, because they'll stay for hours.

-- https://www.intrepidlife.com/helium-and-led-sky-lanterns/

 

[Ann K]

looks wispy around the edges

That's because it is out of focus.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Just some background. This video was posted 5 years ago by Caique 299, which seems to be a Portuguese, I'm thinking Brazilian, YouTube channel all about 1000cc sport bikes. This is not something they usually post. The video in turn seems to be a repost of something recorded by a WMDrones as that's the logo in the upper right corner. I can't make out the rest of it.

I could find a number of WM Drone channels on YouTube, some that seem to be in Portuguese, but none that use that logo or any that have been around for 5 years. It seems at least one other person wanted to know where Caique 299 got the video, but he never responded:

So, as is often the case, NO location, NO time and NO date. I think they're speaking Brazilian Portuguese in the OP video, so that would whittle it down to sometime before 2020 and somewhere in Brazil. Maybe?

 

[NorCal Dave]

It was my crying face because it looked like a clear bunk. im a human being with a soul.

Feel free to refer to me as an old "Boomer" that doesn't understand proper internet communication styles, but I still don't know what you're trying to say.

Something that "looked like a clear bunk" is a confusing statement. Are you saying Easy Muffin's suggestion of Loon balloons is "bunk"? That is, you disagree with it? Or do you mean it's a clear "debunk" of the object in the OP video and the balloons are the likely solution? Neither of these options are conveyed with the photo of Fraiser. I can't tell if he's supposed to be crying or is inebriated.

There are many people on here that are not native English speakers and/or from cultures that don't use memes and non-written communication styles in the same way. And some, like myself, are just too old and didn't grow up using pictagrams to convey complex messages. Best practice is to just say what you mean in a clear way.

Do you think the Loon project balloons are a likely solution to the object in the OP or not?

 

[Ravi]

That's because it is out of focus.

I think just not resolved by the camera optics, resolution wise.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I just want to fill in some details.

This ring shape seems to be a result of:
-Bright areas where there are specular reflections of the Sun.
-Less luminous areas where there's a mixture of diffuse reflection and the light of the sky shining through.
-Dark areas where there are no specular reflections and a minimum of diffuse reflections. In these areas the envelope is more transparent and we see the light of the sky shining through; which in contrast to the brighter reflections, looks dark.

There are specular reflections in the exterior surfaces and the interior surfaces of the plastic envelope. There are also interior reflections between the two interior surfaces. And so on. A complex geometry which causes a kind of glitter pattern of individual specular reflections over a wide area.

In better focus

In worse focus

Very similar to this...

Many people thought the dark area is a silhouette of the payload, but it may not be.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/im...us-object-shot-down-over-yukon-in-2023.13668/

This shape also seems to be a result of this pattern of specular reflections, diffuse reflections and transparent areas in the envelope of the balloon. In this case the sunlight was red, so these are reflections of red light. Thus the red/orange glow.

-It's an image which is in poor focus.
-The resolution is not great because this was recorded with a consumer grade camera with a high magnification but a small objective lens. The small lens diameter restricts the amount of light gathered, reducing image clarity and detail. Possible use of digital zoom... and so on.
-There is a further degradation of the resolution - and some distortion - due to the amount of atmosphere the light is passing through.

All of which makes it look more mysterious.

 

[Ann K]

I think just not resolved by the camera optics, resolution wise.

Isn't "Not resolved by the camera optics" a euphemism for "out of focus"?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

No. Resolution and focus are not the same thing.

 

[Mick West]

I think just not resolved by the camera optics, resolution wise.

Isn't "Not resolved by the camera optics" a euphemism for "out of focus"?

No. Resolution and focus are not the same thing.

The ability to resolve something (i.e. make out particular details, like lines or points) has a variety of factors. Camera sensor (or resultant image) resolution (in pixels) is one, and focus and optics quality is another. The diffraction limit is one more.

So "out of focus" can essentially be "Not resolved by the camera optics", but @Ravi seemed to be talking about pixel resolution.

"Not resolved by the camera optics" can also mean things other than focus. Is the sensor part of "camera optics". Arguable, but probably not productively arguable.

This image seems not resolved for a variety of reasons: focus, sensor resolution, imperfect optics, a bit of glare, low light, noise, and atmospheric effects.

 

[John J.]

Why the toroidal shape? like an apple cross section.

An apple cross section is emphatically not a toroid,

In mathematics, a toroid is a surface of revolution with a hole in the middle. The axis of revolution passes through the hole and so does not intersect the surface.

Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroid

A hypothetical toroid, where the surface of revolution rotates through the horizontal plane, will always have a void bounded in the horizontal plane when in plan view. Apples don't.
If we accept that there is material within the brighter-lit, roughly circular periphery of this object, and that material is part of the object (not e.g. behind it) then we are not looking at a toroid.

Apples are not shaped by a toroidal process. Nor do they have magnetic lines of force, although I appreciate the coincidental similarity of the lines in the sectioned fruit to a 2-D representation of a magnetic field.

edges reminiscent of the suns corona, wispy discharges around it

The edges appear to be evaporative

I see what you're getting at, but in describing something that's unidentified it's perhaps better to use simple, unloaded descriptive terms.
When viewed with the naked eye during an eclipse, the solar corona (in clear skies and at a fair elevation) appears whitish, this does not.
The Sun's corona is extraordinarily hot, approx. 1,000,000 K; the presence of something sizeable and that hot in our atmosphere might cause some dramatic effects.

The edges appear indistinct, whether this is a feature of the object or due to poorly-resolved imagery we don't know.
I think it's unlikely that the footage is a clear depiction of the object.

To me -and this is subjective- the similarities with the balloons posted by @Easy Muffin and @Z.W. Wolf here are significant;

The images at right are of known, identified balloons. Similar diffuse periphery, similar "twin" arcs of brightness.
Balloons can, and do, carry LEDs, and @Easy Muffin has supplied evidence that the Loon balloons (above) carry them.

We don't know at what time of day this footage was taken (IIRC). If it was around dawn or dusk, a low-elevation sun, its light reddened by atmospheric scattering, might account for the orange-red colour.

On the thread Colorado Phoenix - June 21, 2017, @Wonko quoted a witness to a fiery being in the sky...

We were on our front deck watching the sunset and sky when my husband saw bright lights coming from the west...

I took video with my phone while he took still pictures a second one came from the same direction we have pictures and video, best description as a phoenix or angelic form.

At first glance the pictures look intriguing,

...and I can certainly "see" the phoenix (or a giant space dragonfly entering the atmosphere or maybe a glowing wyvern),
but when we remember the Colorado couple's information- it was sunset, the sun is low in the sky and so anything flying sufficiently high will reflect sunlight from its underside- a more likely explanation is evident:

@Mendel, @Easy Muffin and @Z.W. Wolf have called it, I think, it's a balloon carrying flashing LEDs, possibly a Loon LLC balloon, illuminated by the low Sun and filmed using non-optimal equipment.
No need to invoke toroids, coronae, mechanical oscillations, discharges or evaporative surfaces.

 

[JMartJr]

At first glance the pictures look intriguing,

...and I can certainly "see" the phoenix (or a giant space dragonfly entering the atmosphere or maybe a glowing wyvern),

Interestingly (to me, anyway) when I saw that I was pretty sure it was going to be a forest fire on the adjacent hill, I've seen pics of that sort of thing taht look much like this.

Shows the value of proceeding beyond "I looked at it and to me it is OBVIOUSLY a... whatever." And the value of crowd-sourcing this stuff as an aid to taking the next steps beyond "It looks like..."

 

[Minus0]

This looks like a Project Loon balloon illuminated in a red hue by the rising or setting sun

See this for comparison

Case closed. 98% confident that's the same thing. Very nice

 

[JMartJr]

Case closed. 98% confident that's the same thing. Very nice

I thunk you are out by about 2%!
But yeah.

 

[eleggua]

never seen anything like it.