Lights in the sky seen from Baltimore, Maryland, July 17th 2024

[MonkeeSage]

Reddit poster Horror-Fish9503 filmed several lights in the sky from the Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland, looking roughly South West towards the M&T Bank Stadium and Horseshoe Casino, on July 17th, 2024, starting around 8:30pm EDT and lasting for around 2 hours.

The lights appear and hover, or appear and then move to the viewers left.

OP's description:

Can anyone explain these? They appeared around 9pm from an extremely far distance viewable from my hotel room. They were there, appearing, disappearing, changing brightness, moving in strange formations. They were extremely bright to the point where as of now, I can see the shadow imprint when I blink as if I was looking at the sun for too long. I have multiple videos where you can see the time of day changing yet they still remain. They were there for hours. I have a Galaxy s24 Ultra and I'm at max zoom. Attached in the google drive link is most of the footage I captured also with reference daytime photos I took the following morning to show the distance they were from me while emitting this bright, bright light easily visible without the camera. Any ideas on what this could be? I'm seeing multiple new posts here of people capturing what looks like what I saw. [Link to other thread] This is the post that caused me to post mine. They were also in Maryland.

I have footage of it during the sunset and afterward at around 10pm-11pm at night and they stayed there

I was in The Marriott Waterfront downtown if that helps. I'm not really a navigator, so I really couldn't tell you where the airport was in relation to me. Lol, but every plane I saw was either going from left to right at a way higher altitude.

Source: www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1e6utyi/lights_in_the_sky_in_downtown_baltimore_july_17th/

Here are two sample screenshots:

Google drive links to original videos provided by OP:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ML-aFkVjdakEDGI3xCW59O_eUEAwwkOg

Exif creation timestamps from the 4 videos:

2024:07:18 00:38:56
2024:07:18 00:55:05
2024:07:18 01:14:15
2024:07:18 01:41:16

Sunset was at 20:31 local time (EDT, UTC-4), so the above timestamps are in UTC.
https://www.suncalc.org/#/39.2904,-76.6123,12/2024.07.17/20:31/1/3

Reddit user rasterX provides the following information including line of sight:

Map:

Source: https://i.imgur.com/cdEZMyq.jpeg


The three radio antennas are located at 3500 Commerce Dr, Halethorpe, MD 21227.
https://www.city-data.com/towers/cell-Baltimore-Maryland.html#mapFCC_Antenna_towers

Street View of antennas from a nearby road: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.254...i16384!8i8192?authuser=0&coh=205409&entry=ttu

Stabilized video, the trajectory of the objects is more easily discerned when the ground is stationary (try 2x playback):

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS10LAIZ7z4

Reddit user Parking-Ad-1929 noted:

There are six police helicopters (Foxtrots) in/around Baltimore and two are normally in the air at this time of day. Sustained position is typical, but usually for only 20 minutes at a time.

That direction is toward BWI, NSA, and a host of other agencies. A decent number of aircraft do not use transponders, such as Blackhawks and JSOC Little Birds that train around there on the power lines.

I found N911AP was flying tight circles around Patuxent Research Refuge for 2 hours in roughly the direction OP was looking, but it was actually during the previous morning and a bit to far East vs established line of sight, and didn't find any choppers in that direction at that time of OPs videos.

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N911AP/history/20240716/1323Z/KFME/KFME


Baltimore/Washington International Airport (BWI) is to the East of OP's line of sight, about 7 miles away from OP, so several people suggested the lights might be planes on approach for landing there.

Reddit user tharrison4815 checked for that but did not find a match:

My first thought was planes on approach with landing lights on as I've seen this before and it looks similar.

However, we can determine the exact angle that OP is looking at based on landmarks in the video (Horseshoe Casino in foreground, and WRBS antenna in background). We also know the rough time and date. So based on this I've checked the playback on Flight Radar for this time and no planes approach from this direction. OP is looking south west, but all planes approach from the south east heading north west.

I've made an image here to show what I mean.

https://ibb.co/C0sZxng

They found that planes approaching Dulles were on the correct line of sight, but it seemed too far away:

However one thing I will note is that planes approaching Dulles International actually line up perfectly.

https://ibb.co/g31B97w

However it measures 50 miles away. Would landing lights appear that bright from that distance?

I found that planes on approach to Reagan/DCA during that time period are often flying North East on a similar heading before turning South East to the airport. Here's one from the exif timestamp of the first video:

Rockville is only 30 miles from OP by Google Earth line tool, but I am assuming even that is too far to see landing lights that brightly?

 

[Easy Muffin]

It's the landing lights of traffic into Washington National. In the linked video at 20:52:33 there's a plane pretty much exactly above the mast, that's SWA3692 out of Baltimore. The two lights below it are AAL372 and AAL2434. They are 70+ km away at this point and moving towards the camera so they appear to be almost standing still. When the light on the left starts to fade out at 20:53:05 is when that plane starts a righthand turn, which moves the beam of its landing lights away from the camera.
I haven't got enough time right now to show it more clearly but it all matches perfecty in Google Earth.

 

[MonkeeSage]

It's the landing lights of traffic into Washington National. In the linked video at 20:52:33 there's a plane pretty much exactly above the mast, that's SWA3692 out of Baltimore. The two lights below it are AAL372 and AAL2434. They are 70+ km away at this point and moving towards the camera so they appear to be almost standing still. When the light on the left starts to fade out at 20:53:05 is when that plane starts a righthand turn, which moves the beam of its landing lights away from the camera.

The original source for that clip starts about 2 minutes into the video on google drive named 20240717_205010.mp4, so the timestamp shown on that stabilized video seems roughly accurate. I see the flights you identified on adsbexchange.

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?replay=2024-07-18-00:52&lat=39.166&lon=-76.943&zoom=10.4

AAL372 also turns right/East around 20:55 (00:55 UTC) when the second light starts to fade in the video, so seems like a good match for all three planes. Nice find! I will also try to find some other matches tomorrow if nobody else does.

Is it normal to be able to see the lights that brightly from 70km/40mi away? Or is there some kind of atmospheric effect that allows that?

 

[jarlrmai]

Dulles is directly in the LOS

 

[Easy Muffin]

Is it normal to be able to see the lights that brightly from 70km/40mi away?

At twilight and in clear air like this? Yes, easily.

 

[MonkeeSage]

At twilight and in clear air like this? Yes, easily.

Are there other videos to compare to?

 

[FatPhil]

Are there other videos to compare to?

There's a plane in the same video - so taken in identical conditions on identical equipment, and we're seeing its nav/wingtip leds aren't we? They'll surely be only a fraction of the power of the landing lights. Distance of course matters, but the inverse square law shouldn't just be blindly applied, because wingtips throw their light widely, and the landing lights have tight lobes - and from the lack of sideways motion, the bogeys are coming right at us, we're near the peak of their lobe.


EDIT: some blah-blah-blah from an AI (perplexity.io 's default LLaMa-3), which shows the kinds of calculations involved, not to be taken as an answer to the question, and quite probably very wrong, not least because I put in completely random inputs:

--> Approximately how would the brightness of a 100W light at a distance of 50km and a conical beam width of 20 degrees compare to that of a 20W light at a distance of 15km and a conical beam width of 120 degrees? Please show your working.

To compare the brightness of the two lights, we need to consider the light intensity and how it decreases with distance. The intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Additionally, the beam width affects the concentration of light, with narrower beams resulting in higher intensity. Let's break down the problem step by step:

Light Intensity:
100W Light at 50km:
The intensity of the 100W light at a distance of 50km will be:
I_100W = 100W/4π(50km)^2 = 100W/78539816.36m^2 ≈ 1.27×10−6W/m^2
I_{100W}=\frac{100W}{4\pi(50km)^2}=\frac{100W}{78539816.36m^2}\approx 1.27\times 10^{-6}W/m^2

[... looks like it includes the equations multuple times, I'll leave both the plain text and the TeX-like version, as neither's optimal ...]

20W Light at 15km:
The intensity of the 20W light at a distance of 15km will be:
I_20W = 20W/4π(15km)^2 = 20W/706865.17m^2 ≈ 2.83×10−5W/m^2
I_{20W}=\frac{20W}{4\pi(15km)^2}=\frac{20W}{706865.17m^2}\approx 2.83\times 10^{-5}W/m^2

Beam Width:
Conical Beam Width:
The conical beam width affects the concentration of light. A narrower beam width results in higher intensity. For the 100W light with a 20-degree beam width, the intensity will be more concentrated than for the 20W light with a 120-degree beam width.

Comparison:
Brightness Comparison:
Although the 20W light at 15km has a higher intensity (2.83 \times 10^{-5} W/m^2) compared to the 100W light at 50km (1.27 \times 10^{-6} W/m^2), the narrower beam width of the 100W light (20 degrees) will make it appear brighter than the 20W light with a wider beam width (120 degrees).

In summary, the 100W light at 50km with a 20-degree beam width will appear brighter than the 20W light at 15km with a 120-degree beam width due to the concentration of light within the narrower beam.

 

[JMartJr]

Sounds like the plane idea is coming together -- but does that account for the way the lights fade out rather than switch off? They give the impression of Chinese lanterns in that respect, tough how they fade IN is not a great match. Perhaps all the fading in and out is more to do with planes turning to where they shining their lights towards the camera, then turning to where they are not?

 

[Easy Muffin]

Are there other videos to compare to?

I'm sure there's lots of video out there somewhere, probably shot inadvertently, but at that distance it won't be immediately obvious that the objects are just ordinary planes. Most likely they'll appear as nondescript lights in the sky so if you were to convince others of your idea you'd also have to go and combine each video with flightpath data and so on. I have personally seen landing planes from as far as 90 km, though. They're really (REALLY) bright if you happen to be in the narrow central cone of the beam.

Hmm, something like this maybe? Much shorter distance of course.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

Is it normal to be able to see the lights that brightly from 70km/40mi away? Or is there some kind of atmospheric effect that allows that?

I used to have an apartment in north Old Town Alexandria, facing north at a heading of around 10 or 15 degrees. Incredibly clear view of anything going on at DCA. When the traffic pattern allowed it, you could see aircraft coming from the east or south making a 150 to 180 degree turn to start the run down the Potomac to Runway 19. Under most conditions (like not actively raining), you could watch their landing lights pop into view all evening long. That turn was 28mi/45km away. I'm certain that I could have seen aircraft much more distant, but landing lights are fairly directional and beyond that point, they were moving away from me or the planes from the north and west were perpendicular to my view. 40 miles away? Yeah, if they're pointed at you, I wouldn't even hesitate to think I could see them.

 

[Ravi]

FatPhil said:
EDIT: some blah-blah-blah from an AI (perplexity.io 's default LLaMa-3), which shows the kinds of calculations involved, not to be taken as an answer to the question, and quite probably very wrong, not least because I put in completely random inputs:

Indeed, the AI was not even smart enough to use the correct units.. It should be Irradiance not Intensity. The calculation is also not radiometrically correct..

 

[jarlrmai]

Can we get some sort of sitewide guidance on posting the output of AI? It just ups the noise level way too much and could cause confusion and search results to be less useful etc.

 

[Ann K]

I used to have an apartment in north Old Town Alexandria, facing north at a heading of around 10 or 15 degrees. Incredibly clear view of anything going on at DCA. When the traffic pattern allowed it, you could see aircraft coming from the east or south making a 150 to 180 degree turn to start the run down the Potomac to Runway 19. Under most conditions (like not actively raining), you could watch their landing lights pop into view all evening long. That turn was 28mi/45km away. I'm certain that I could have seen aircraft much more distant, but landing lights are fairly directional and beyond that point, they were moving away from me or the planes from the north and west were perpendicular to my view. 40 miles away? Yeah, if they're pointed at you, I wouldn't even hesitate to think I could see them.

Thanks for the description. My first thought would have been to ask the viewer to check whether he could see the same thing in the following nights, as you might expect of airport traffic. But the original post came from someone in a hotel, so probably not a resident of the area and not familiar with those lights as a nightly occurrence.

 

[Scaramanga]

I used to work on the 17th floor of an office block in Croydon in the UK. I had a superb view looking over to Heathrow airport 20 miles away. And I'd see these sort of 'UFOs' every single day. Sometimes 6 or 7 of them all in a row in the sky. They'd seemingly 'hover' there, and 'get brighter', and appear all in a line or in some sort of formation.

But...I guess the world is still full of people who've never seen aircraft come in to land all on the same flight path and who think it must be aliens.

 

[FatPhil]

Indeed, the AI was not even smart enough to use the correct units.. It should be Irradiance not Intensity. The calculation is also not radiometrically correct..

Fortunately it doesn't need to be. It just needs to makes the same mistake(s) for both sources. Once you've defined the radius of a sphere, you've got a m^2/sr scaling factor, and irradiance and intensity are thenceforth interchangeable via that scaling factor. He should be using irradiance, but you'll notice that when he says "intensity", he's throwing the m^2/sr scaling factor in, so actually calculating irradiance in the right correct units, just calling it by the wrong name. Of course, AIs are particularly terrible at doing numerical calculations, so it's worth repeating the procedure manually once you've got the right numbers to put in.

But good catch, I hadn't spotted the intensity/irradiance gaff.

Aside: I did have a reasonably positive view of an AI's output the other day, as I tested the hypothesis "AI's can't generalise" presented in a vid in a channel recommended herein a few days ago (I forget which, tab now closed), and managed to get quite successful generalisation of rules from one domain into another domain where such rules would never have been applied before - creative works, fields where there's no such thing as a wrong note until you've heard the next one (Miles Davis paraphrase), and you don't make mistakes you just have happy little accidents (Bob Ross paraphrase) - but absolutely nothing persuades me that AI is better than any of the alternatives in any technical domain at all, and this provides another supporting data point. Thank you, human!

 

[FatPhil]

I used to work on the 17th floor of an office block in Croydon in the UK. I had a superb view looking over to Heathrow airport 20 miles away. And I'd see these sort of 'UFOs' every single day. Sometimes 6 or 7 of them all in a row in the sky. They'd seemingly 'hover' there, and 'get brighter', and appear all in a line or in some sort of formation.

But...I guess the world is still full of people who've never seen aircraft come in to land all on the same flight path and who think it must be aliens.

Ditto - and from Harrow I was even closer - plus some more exotic ones from Northolt. You of course also had Gatwick. and the occasional Biggin Hill too I guess, and did you occasionally see bizarre lights over London itself because of London City?

Commercial airlines have been running for over 100 years now, and they have featured repeatedly in movies and in the news, there really is no excuse for pretending that lights, seemingly under intelligent control, in the sky aren't most likely just planes.

 

[FatPhil]

I used to work on the 17th floor of an office block in Croydon in the UK. I had a superb view looking over to Heathrow airport 20 miles away. And I'd see these sort of 'UFOs' every single day. Sometimes 6 or 7 of them all in a row in the sky. They'd seemingly 'hover' there, and 'get brighter', and appear all in a line or in some sort of formation.

But...I guess the world is still full of people who've never seen aircraft come in to land all on the same flight path and who think it must be aliens.

You're saying there are people who've not seen /Die Hard 2/?

 

[FatPhil]

Can we get some sort of sitewide guidance on posting the output of AI? It just ups the noise level way too much and could cause confusion and search results to be less useful etc.

Replace it with the alternative - you have 60 seconds - your time starts now.

And who was left confused by its output? Are you speaking for others? Speaking for others would probably fall under "speculation", and is already against the posting guidelines.

 

[jarlrmai]

Replace it with the alternative - you have 60 seconds - your time starts now.

And who was left confused by its output? Are you speaking for others? Speaking for others would probably fall under "speculation", and is already against the posting guidelines.

What does this even mean? Posting AI output unchecked is also speculation.

 

[Easy Muffin]

It's the landing lights of traffic into Washington National. In the linked video at 20:52:33 there's a plane pretty much exactly above the mast, that's SWA3692 out of Baltimore. The two lights below it are AAL372 and AAL2434. They are 70+ km away at this point and moving towards the camera so they appear to be almost standing still. When the light on the left starts to fade out at 20:53:05 is when that plane starts a righthand turn, which moves the beam of its landing lights away from the camera.
I haven't got enough time right now to show it more clearly but it all matches perfecty in Google Earth.

I had a few minutes to spare this morning.

Green line is the SWA out of Baltimore, the circle indicates the position of the plane at that time. The two red lines show the position of the two planes into DCA. The white line on the ground points towards the mast.
The video screenshot is synced to the same time.

 

[Mendel]

Replace it with the alternative - you have 60 seconds - your time starts now.

posters writing their own posts, using their own knowledge or citing substantive sources

we've done it for years, dunno why that was a question for you

 

[FatPhil]

What does this even mean? Posting AI output unchecked is also speculation.

I notice that you didn't replace it with the alternative as asked.

The AI output I included showed you how to fish. Don't complain about the fish it caught, that clearly wasn't the intention, I even told you it might be poisoned.

 

[FatPhil]

posters writing their own posts, using their own knowledge or citing substantive sources

we've done it for years, dunno why that was a question for you

You've made up your own question and answered it - I certainly didn't ask whatever that is an answer to.
I asked for a replacement of the output, not a description of how that replacement would be created.

 

[Mendel]

You've made up your own question and answered it - I certainly didn't ask whatever that is an answer to.

"Can we get some sort of sitewide guidance on posting the output of AI?"
"Replace it with the alternative"

I notice that you didn't replace it with the alternative as asked.

I don't really see a problem in coming up with a stinking fish wrong answer in 60 seconds. I simply don't see the point.
Challenges like that belong in the ChitChat subforum.

 

[FatPhil]

"Can we get some sort of sitewide guidance on posting the output of AI?"
"Replace it with the alternative"

Ah, a very subtle language mismatch. Given that the complaint was a in response to a singular example of posting the output of AI, to me "it" would only refer to the singular example rather the continuous action, as "that" would be the pronoun to use had I wanted to refer to the general action. I can see how such a difference would not be detected.

 

[Mendel]

Ah, a very subtle language mismatch. Given that the complaint was a in response to a singular example of posting the output of AI, to me "it" would only refer to the singular example rather the continuous action, as "that" would be the pronoun to use had I wanted to refer to the general action. I can see how such a difference would not be detected.

Now that I can replace with an alternative:
"I'm sorry my post was ambiguous. Next time, when I want to make the point that AI lets you post something quickly and have others sort out whether it's correct, I'll state it directly."

 

[FatPhil]

Now that I can replace with an alternative:
"I'm sorry my post was ambiguous. Next time, when I want to make the point that AI lets you post something quickly and have others sort out whether it's correct, I'll state it directly."

Point taken, but the "whether it's correct" is an irrelevance, "not" was gimme - I literally told you that. It was a somewhat, but not fatally, flawed demonstration of *how* you would go from inputs to outputs; pulled-out-of-the-arse inputs will obviously yield pulled-out-of-the-arse outputs. The kind of person who would appreciate that assistance is not going to be the kind of person who's going to be happy juggling steradians - something more pedantically correct could even have been *less* useful. I could have added a reference to Archimedes' Hat-Box theorem, because the stage where you'd use that was the bit where the bot's procedure ran dry.

 

[Scaramanga]

You of course also had Gatwick. and the occasional Biggin Hill too I guess, and did you occasionally see bizarre lights over London itself because of London City?

No, but I now live literally right under the flight path into and out of Gatwick from the continent. The airport is about 15 miles away and flights heading east fly right over my house at about 4,000 feet or so. And there is the exact same 'UFO' phenomenon of bright lights seeming to 'hover' in the sky for a long time. The lights grow brighter and then disappear....the disappearance being due to the landing lights being switched off or the fact that they have quite a narrow visibility window that vanishes as the angle of the plane gets higher.