Lights in the Sky in SoCal...

[flarkey]

Twitter user Beckie_Ness introduced this video and included the hashtag #DebunkersWelcome, which was a nice touch. This looks very much like an aircraft, but can we prove it?



Source: https://twitter.com/Beckie_ness/status/1567385051498967041?t=iVIjWgq7drnjMfogcWVaKg&s=09

 

[flarkey]

Video for those who don't like Twitter.

Location: Ontario, California - Interstate I-10-, Hwy -60?
Date: 7 Sept 2022
Time: 6:31AM BST = 5:30AM UTC = 1030PM LA Time

We should be able to geolocate this junction...

 

[jarlrmai]

Honestly UFO debunking has turned more into "guess where I am" if people want stuff looking at they can just tell us where they were.

I mean you can see the flashing nav lights..

We're going to need an accurate time as well.

 

[flarkey]

Honestly UFO debunking has turned more into "guess where I am" if people want stuff looking at they can just tell us where they were.

We're going to need an accurate time as well.

Yeah you're absolutely right. There's only so much work we can be expected to do.

And I've just realised her hashtag was actually #debunkersunwelcome

 

[jarlrmai]

Yeah you're absolutely right. There's only so much work we can be expected to do.

Already being accused of only picking low hanging fruit when it turns out its another plane.

 

[FatPhil]

Twitter user Beckie_Ness introduced this video and included the hashtag #DebunkersWelcome, which was a nice touch. This looks very much like an aircraft, but can we prove it?

If anyone can - you can!

Just some observations, mostly not firmly founded:
- Firstly, no suspicion of any doctoring of the video, this looks 100% captured live from a moving vehicle by a hand-held phone camera.
Unimportant asides: So many Internal reflections I wouldn't be surprised if it was an iPhone; Also, wow - the image stabilisation is working overtime! (@Ann K) See how the flaring lights by the side of the road are sometimes held really steady, but at that point the internal reflections are bouncing around like crazy (she's pointing the camera half way in between).
- Secondly, the camera seems perfectly happy to saturate colours all over the images, yet those lights seem pretty neutral to me. Were they planes, given that we occasionally have the resolving power to separate three separate lights, I'd have expected to be able some red and/or some blinking at some point.
- I'm more inclined towards a hexacopter (purely for the 3-way symmetry, there's no reason a quad can't have 3 sets of lights), except even then, the lack of blinking lights would make drone flight against FAA regs, IIUC. However, I suspect drone operators are more likely to be willing to risk breaking the law than pilots.

Finding the plane, if it's a plane, would be the best easy solution.

 

[jarlrmai]

Also what is it with LA I swear half my Google Earth pins are in the area from San Bernardino to San Clemente island and that's for everyone from Beckie on Twitter, to the might of the US Navy.

 

[FatPhil]

I mean you can see the flashing nav lights..

Yup, on a rewatch, I agree. There's a weird aliasing effect where they stay steady for a while and then shimmer for a while, and I put that down to just in-camera issues, but it's not a glitch, it's defintely something happening outside on the aircraft itself.

And #denunkersunwelcome, eh? Those are the parties I most like to crash, throw up in the punch bowl, and then run, just for S&Gs!

 

[Mendel]

Also what is it with LA I swear half my Google Earth pins are in the area from San Bernardino to San Clemente island

Good place for extraterrestrials to go undercover?

 

[RTM]

Yeah you're absolutely right. There's only so much work we can be expected to do.

And I've just realised her hashtag was actually #debunkersunwelcome

She has replied to some of Mick's tweets recently, let's just say she won't take any reality based explanation for her #experience.

 

[flarkey]

Found it:

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.087...4!1sOl6mB9-vFtsG-3fSQJebYA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

And

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0869221,-117.6419619,3a,75y,81.38h,86.53t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s8au62iJXrd42ikHScNiMOg!2e0!6shttps://streetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com/v1/thumbnail?panoid=8au62iJXrd42ikHScNiMOg&cb_client=maps_sv.tactile.gps&w=203&h=100&yaw=3.8528783&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i16384!8i8192

Which gives a route of...

 

[deirdre]

which means if this ufo starts following you, it would be appropriate to emote "oh my god! oh my god!"

 

[deirdre]

or could be tail lights. i see red in her video but not green
LA PD

 

[Ann K]

Which gives a route of...

Ooh, right near the airport! Goodness me, I AM surprised!

Are we allowed to impute motives to someone who says "debunkers unwelcome"?

 

[flarkey]

DOnt have an exact time of the video, but this was flying around the airport on the evening of 7 Sept

 

[flarkey]

This pass of the helicopter fits...

Produces this 3d pass in Google earth

 

[Mick West]

Are we allowed to impute motives to someone who says "debunkers unwelcome"?

Best to assume good faith. Rebecca seems very passionate about the UFO topic and appears to genuinely believe she's seeing lots of things in the sky and does not like it when her interpretation is questioned. Last week she saw the moon behind some clouds (as did several other people) and mistook it for a UFO.

Let's avoid mockery, please.

 

[deirdre]

but this was flying around the airport on the evening of 7 Sept

what time was your screnshot?

 

[flarkey]

what time was your screnshot?

Roughly 5am UTC.

 

[deirdre]

Roughly 5am UTC.

what time in california? no outside reader (or me) knows what 5am UTC time is.

 

[flarkey]

what time in california? no outside reader (or me) knows what 5am UTC time is.

Ah, I thought you wanted the time for the ADSB Playback

It was flying around the area at the time shown below (around 4.30am - ish)

For time conversions I use:

https://savvytime.com/converter/utc-to-ca-los-angeles

 

[Landru]

Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/Beckie_ness/status/1567512975229202432

 

[deirdre]

Ah, I thought you wanted the time for the ADSB Playback

It was flying around the area at the time shown below (around 4.30am - ish)

View attachment 54567

For time conversions I use:

https://savvytime.com/converter/utc-to-ca-los-angeles

View attachment 54568

ok 9:30 pm in LA. so perfect match!

 

[tinkertailor]

Also what is it with LA I swear half my Google Earth pins are in the area from San Bernardino to San Clemente island and that's for everyone from Beckie on Twitter, to the might of the US Navy.

My theory, based on living, driving, and using Nextdoor in LA, is as follows:
-we have a lot of air traffic here, flying low
-we have a lot of weird air traffic here at odd hours (i.e. the Goodyear blimp, which has gotten me a few times when it's landing next to the freeway late at night)
-we have a lot of people, which means a lot of UFO believers

As far as the Navy, I have no idea. UAPs love Catalina as much as everyone else here I guess?

 

[Ann K]

we have a lot of weird air traffic here at odd hours (i.e. the Goodyear blimp, which has gotten me a few times when it's landing next to the freeway late at night)

As I live right on its usual Akron-to-Cleveland flight path, I'm amused to hear you refer to the Goodyear Blimp as "weird air traffic". Fun fact: when everything else except military traffic was grounded after the 9/11 attacks, our blimp (hardly an attack threat) was flying.

 

[jarlrmai]

I think this other light is Jupiter

 

[Mechanik]

My theory, based on living, driving, and using Nextdoor in LA, is as follows:
-we have a lot of air traffic here, flying low
-we have a lot of weird air traffic here at odd hours (i.e. the Goodyear blimp, which has gotten me a few times when it's landing next to the freeway late at night)

Having a heck of a time posting from my phone, my apologies.

LAX and ONT are nearly aligned east-west. I lived in Westchester for nearly 10 years, 2-3 mile miles north of the north runway. It was not unusual to see landing lights from as many as 15 planes at once while looking east.

ONT is a very active passenger and freight hub. As a bi-weekly flyer back in the day, LAX landings headed towards ONT before turning onto the LAX flight path.

In 2017, the takeoff path from ONT was changed to allow steeper northward takeoffs and slower descents. Most likely to get the ONT aircraft out of the inbound LAX glidepath sooner and allow faster insertion to LAX. Back in the day we used to circle near ONT while waiting for a landing slot. See this for a partial reference to the change.

My point is that the area under consideration contains all of the outbound ONT traffic, plus the inbound LAX traffic. Local helicopters excluded, that's a massive amount of aircraft to sort through.

 

[tinkertailor]

Having a heck of a time posting from my phone, my apologies.

LAX and ONT are nearly aligned east-west. I lived in Westchester for nearly 10 years, 2-3 mile miles north of the north runway. It was not unusual to see landing lights from as many as 15 planes at once while looking east.

ONT is a very active passenger and freight hub. As a bi-weekly flyer back in the day, LAX landings headed towards ONT before turning onto the LAX flight path.

In 2017, the takeoff path from ONT was changed to allow steeper northward takeoffs and slower descents. Most likely to get the ONT aircraft out of the inbound LAX glidepath sooner and allow faster insertion to LAX. Back in the day we used to circle near ONT while waiting for a landing slot. See this for a partial reference to the change.

My point is that the area under consideration contains all of the outbound ONT traffic, plus the inbound LAX traffic. Local helicopters excluded, that's a massive amount of aircraft to sort through.

Totally. Then, there's the fact that COVID really lessened our air traffic for a few years and, to my eyes, it's only just recently gotten back to where it was pre-march 2020. It was very strange to see incoming flights over my place again after two years of eerie silence. I could see someone thinking it was something unexplainable very easily.

 

[rubytuesday]

Also what is it with LA I swear half my Google Earth pins are in the area from San Bernardino to San Clemente island and that's for everyone from Beckie on Twitter, to the might of the US Navy.

...it really looks like a helicopter or low flying prop plane to me. I used to fly around Ontario when I was doing my PPL (never finished ;( ) because I flew out of Brackett Field. There are some airfields out in that area that are mostly empty we used to practice landings and they can be very large and easy to land on. Just my three or four cents.