Strange Lights over Las Vegas April 25, 2023

I think these flares are very distant. There are very few neighborhoods in Las Vegas with this kind of hill view. In both videos we seem to be looking northwest from the hills in the Henderson area. Rachel is northwest. In other words, Area 51.
 
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More battlefield illumination flares.

You're in the Vegas area aren't you Mr. Wolf? Does the begining of the video show the Startasphere to the right and the Mirage (soon to be the Hard Rock) to the left? If so the video is looking west towards the Strip right?

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So, on google maps the Strat to the top, McCarran airport to the bottom and Mirage in the center with the observer looking from the right, yes?

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That more or less lines up with the helicopters I think:

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With Ft. Irwin being 106 miles away towards the southwest:

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Could someone looking west towards the Strip see something there? I don't know, asking you as I thought you lived near Las Vegas.
 
I think these are distant battlefield illumination flares to the NW.

Hotels.png
The right most hotel is The Stratosphere Tower.

Red arrow - Fontainebleau.

Yellow arrow - Resorts World Las Vegas

Green Arrow - Encore

Notice that the Fontainebleau is dark. It's not open yet.

The only way to get this view of the Fontainebleau is from the SE in the hills in the Henderson area. So we are looking to the NW. I think these flares are near Area 51.



Area 51 k.png
These flares are very bright, very distant and at high altitude. As I said, they're orange because of atmospheric extinction.

All of the usual objections can be answered.

These aren't parachute flares because:

They're stationary/they're just hovering motionless.
There's no smoke trails. You always see smoke trails.
They're in formation and the formation doesn't change. The wind would blow them around in front of each other.

You wouldn't notice either of these motions, or the smoke trails, at that great distance and high altitude.

I suspect that they are just peeking over the Spring Mountains. So people in the hills would see them but people in the Valley wouldn't; either because they were behind the Spring Mountains or lost behind ground clutter. So only a few people saw them.
 
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The only way to get this view of the Fontainebleau is from the SE in the hills in the Henderson area. So we are looking to the NW. I think these flares are near Area 51.
Can you identify the view axes for both videos on the map? they seem different to me, but I can't say I'm good at identifying cityscape. If they're showing the same lights at the same time, these view axes must intersect at the location of the flares.

If they're video of moving helicopters turning towards the viewer to make their lights "flare" up, they could obviously change location if the videos were taken at different times.
 
Hmmm. Could be.

The second video? That's a tough one. Too little resolution. There are only a very few neighborhoods on hills in Las Vegas, and those are usually not very steep hills. You usually just see the neighbor's roof. (So why live on a hill anyway?) There are some places on the West Side that may look like this.

I've taken a good look at the helicopters in the graphic in the OP. These helicopters seem to be ordinary tour helicopters operating out of McCarren Airport. (Can't bring myself to say the new name.) They fly up the Strip and come back down in two designated lanes. That's a nightly thing and they don't typically look like they do in these videos. They would have to be extraordinarily bright spotlights to stand out like this all of a sudden. Some special advertisement?

It just seems unlikely. But this is Vegas. Unusual things happen. I'd think we'd hear about it though. It would look very spectacular from the Strip.

I don't remember ever seeing tour helicopters with any kind of spotlight at all.
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Military helicopters orbiting the Strip with spotlights on? Never heard of that. Police helicopters? Never heard of that either. Some kind of parade of such?

I think I'll have to stick with flares. There are tour helicopters over the Strip every night at that time. So it's just a coincidence they were there that night when there were also flares in the sky.
 
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I am also pretty certain I have seen similar videos in the past (Cali coast etc) that in the end turned out to be illuminating flares. I am no expert, but I believe some can remain floating for quite a while.
 
I haven't anything material to add, I think Z.W. Wolf is completely right.

But I think it's interesting that some people, seeing lights in the sky in the direction of (what seems like, to me) a vast testing and training area, used by the world's most powerful, sophisticated and well-funded air force, conclude that there is something inexplicable going on that isn't perhaps explained by it happening over a vast testing and training area used by the world's most powerful, sophisticated and well-funded air force.

That said, the Las Vegas lights reminded me of a BBC radio play, "The Light of A Thousand Suns", by James Follett.
(Note, I am not raising this as a hypothesis for the Las Vegas lights!)
Selected quotes from the programme, any errors in transcribing are mine:

"We won't have to bomb them, we have something far more effective."

"One thousand separate units scattered across the country will descend by parachute over selected rural areas with relatively high population densities."

"At 20,000 feet, they will give off a spectacular lighting display. It will last three minutes. Long enough to ensure the maximum number of people are watching them. We conducted some experiments over Suffolk some years ago. Three minutes is the optimum period required to build up sufficient interest to get the greatest number of people watching..."
Content from External Source
(I love the light-touch reference to the Rendlesham Forest "incident" of December 1980, in Suffolk).

From YouTube, "The Light of a Thousand Suns by James Follett", uploaded by user Radio Dave, 2022;
relevant bit from approx. 01:01:30, only 2 minutes long if you don't want to hear the whole thing.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5cU9zJTa9o


Forget the tinfoil hats- we need welding goggles!
 
But I think it's interesting that some people, seeing lights in the sky in the direction of (what seems like, to me) a vast testing and training area, used by the world's most powerful, sophisticated and well-funded air force, conclude that there is something inexplicable going on that isn't perhaps explained by it happening over a vast testing and training area used by the world's most powerful, sophisticated and well-funded air force.
There's an optical deception involved in that the observers see bright lights on the ground and in the sky, and from the similar brightness infer a similar distance, which would put the lights above downtown Las Vegas. (Human stereo vision doesn't work at that range.)

A similar deception is when we have footage of dark trees in the background, and see a dark fuzzy object cross above them, and we infer there's a big alien thing crossing at speed in the distance when it's really a small slow insect close to the camera.

It's a natural inference to subconsciously make.

It's also why eye witness accounts must be examined for what the witnesses actually saw vs. what they thought they saw, because the human brain tends to add inferred information that can be wrong—and if it is wrong, that may easily make the observation seem inexplicable.
 


Reports of burning flares observed in the sky last night came in from Oakville and Mississauga tonight after emergency crews are performing a water rescue. Bright shimmer with a faded trail of smoke in the distance could be seen all evening over Lake Ontario. The Royal Air Force dispatched a rescue airplane from 424 Squadron from 8 Wing in Trenton, Ontario. Canadian Coast Guard along with water units from the Halton Regional Police Services are currently searching for a missing boater after an unoccupied vessel was found. In a tweet tonight, the police underlined that the shiny lights over the lake that people may have spotted were in fact flares used by the crews to illuminate the otherwise dark waters below. The last known position of the possible victim as per HRPS is determined to be the mouth of 16 Mile Creek located near the corner of Lakeshore Rd and Water St in Oakville, Canada. In an updated statement we have learned that the person missing is 80 year old Robert Wyles, an experienced boater who had acquired the vessel the same day and who has been missing since about 6h pm last night.
This case is well documented and will give us a good idea of what large illuminating parachute flares look like at approximately 20 miles.



The camera is looking toward the Toronto Pearson International Airport

Airport Area Arrows.png

Red arrow - Sheraton Gateway Hotel - Mississauga, Ontario

Green arrow - Orlando Corporation - 6205 Airport Road, Mississauga, Ontario


I have the ends of the line fixed on the Orlando Corporation building and on the mouth of Sixteen Mile Creek near the corner of Lakeshore Rd and Water St in Oakville.

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The camera has a telephoto lens, so the camera is another few miles north of the Orlando Corp building. I think it's fair to say that the illuminating parachute flares in this video are about 20 miles away. You can see just a hint of a smoke trail above the flares at times.

I think the flares in the current Las Vegas Mystery Light Case are at least 50 miles distant from the camera. And not likely to be that close. No smoke trails are visible because of the great distance. (And the poor resolution/focus.)

I'm going to refine one point. I think the orangish color of the flares is not due just to atmospheric extinction. I think this type of flare has an intrinsic orangish cast.
 
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I'm going to refine a bit. They were somewhere over the "Nellis Range."

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Area 51 is just a part of that. Not possible to determine exactly how far away they were.
It's over 30 miles from the Fontainebleau to the nearest corner of the NTTR.
 
I make it to be 50 miles from the camera to the flares at the very least. Not likely to be that close.

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I have the ends of the line fixed at the probable camera position in the hills of the Henderson area and Creech Air Force Base at Indian Springs.
 
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I think part of the reason people reject the idea that this type of display can be caused by flares is that they are picturing something that you could hold in your hand, like a road flare. Or they are picturing the kind of hand held flare guns we've all seen on TV. So they are thinking that they are pretty close and low. Not 20 or 50 miles away at a mile in altitude. But these are not signal flares. These are meant to be artificial Suns to light up the landscape.

According to the specs listed here, these flares are 36 inches long, are 5 inches in diameter, weigh 30 pounds and produce 1.8 million candle power. The illustration shows a flare at 5,000 feet (about 1 mile) and the resulting diameter of illumination on the ground. Obviously 5,000 feet is just an example. But it gives us a sense that these are meant to be used at a high altitude.
 
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Is there a video of the LV event that shows us one (or more) of the lights for its entire illumination sequence? I'm trying to figure out they were actually illuminated, from initiation to fade out. On one of the videos, I was able to see the first of second group stay lit for just over 2 minutes before they changed the image.
 
I think part of the reason people reject the idea that this type of display can be caused by flares is that they are picturing something that you could hold in your hand, like a road flare. Or they are picturing the kind of hand held flare guns we've all seen on TV. So they are thinking that they are pretty close and low. Not 20 or 50 miles away at a mile in altitude. But these are not signal flares. These are meant to be artificial Suns to light up the landscape.

According to the specs listed here, these flares are 36 inches long, are 5 inches in diameter, weigh 30 pounds and produce 1.8 million candle power. The illustration shows a flare at 5,000 feet (about 1 mile) and the resulting diameter of illumination on the ground. Obviously 5,000 feet is just an example. But it gives us a sense that these are meant to be used at a high altitude.

All of that, plus the fact that they're descending at only a couple of metres per second, which is almost nothing at the distances under consideration (many thousands of metres). Wind drift in a Beaufort 2 "light breeze" can dominate that (8.3fps ~= 5.6mph if I've done my imperial units wrangling correctly), so in many weather conditions, these could be considered to be floating sideways more than falling.
 
Not 20 or 50 miles away at a mile in altitude. But these are not signal flares. These are meant to be artificial Suns to light up the landscape.

According to the specs listed here, these flares are 36 inches long, are 5 inches in diameter, weigh 30 pounds and produce 1.8 million candle power.
mmh, the specs you posted only go to 1 million candlepower.
Anyway, 1.8 million candela (slightly more than 1.8 million candlepower) at 50 miles/80km will illuminate at 0.00002 lux, comparable to starlight.

It's also about 1000× brighter (in lumen) than a 100W incandescent light bulb. Thus, the flare at 50 miles should appear as bright as a single 100W bulb at 1.6 miles, or a streetlight at 5 miles. Would that fit this video? edit: off by about 12×, my apologies
 
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The table on the top page has the symbol for "approximately equal to" in front of the number one million.

The description on the bottom page says "about 1.8 million."
 
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Anyway, 1.8 million candela (slightly more than 1.8 million candlepower) at 50 miles/80km will illuminate at 0.00002 lux, comparable to starlight.

It's also about 1000× brighter (in lumen) than a 100W incandescent light bulb. Thus, the flare at 50 miles should appear as bright as a single 100W bulb at 1.6 miles, or a streetlight at 5 miles. Would that fit this video?




To calculate lumens from candlepower, multiply the candlepower by 12.57


1.8 million x 12.57 =22, 626, 000 lumens

100 watt bulb = 1600 lumens.

22, 626,000/1600 = 14,141

One flare = 14,141 one hundred watt bulbs

(about)




One flare is about the equivalent of a 757's twin nose wheel landing lights. Landing lights are easily visible at 50 miles in desert air.


https://aerosavvy.com/airplane-lights/

757-landing-lights.jpg
757 Landing lights (GE Q4995X).

The General Electric Q4559X (or incandescent 4559) bulb is used as a landing light on several Boeing, Airbus, and regional jet aircraft. The bulb is also used in the entertainment industry as a spot light because it’s ridiculously bright.

The Q4559X is an 8 inch diameter, halogen, PAR 64, 28 volt, 600 watt bulb. It produces 765,000 candlepower and is classified as a Very Narrow Spot (VNSP) with 11° horizontal beam spread.


You could argue omnidirectional versus Very Narrow Spot
 
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You could argue omnidirectional versus Very Narrow Spot
I would, that's at least a 100× difference.

Your computation is correct, mine had an error.
So, flare at 50 miles ≈ 100W bulb at 700 m / 700 yards, or a streetlight at 200m, not compensating for atmospheric extinction.

With that, it feels plausible that the flare at 50 miles would be comparable in brightness to the downtown Las Vegas illumination.
 
A few updates...

-The camera was not looking toward the Spring Mountains, but through a valley. U.S. Route 95 runs through that valley. I don't know if this is just considered to be a part of the Las Vegas Valley or whether it has a separate name.

- Most Las Vegas Valley residents wouldn't get this view. These flares would have been blocked by mountains.

I've found a muddled video made by UFOlogists nosing around Area 51. They see illuminating parachute flares to the south. The Indian Springs/Creech Air Force Base area would have been to the south of their position near Area 51. This was posted in November of 2020.

The flares descend and become blocked by a ridge, which shows that they are distant.



If they had given a more exact compass heading than just "south" we could have found where the Henderson camera line of sight and their camera line of sight intersect. I'll look at the stars later on, but without an exact time that might not be too helpful.
 
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https://pacificairlifter.com/stories-i-have-heard/flying-flare-training-mission/

This site is called Pacific Airlifter - The Life of USAF Airlifters In The Pacific - Post 1973

This article is - Dropping Flares

The flares shown in this article are the LUU-2D/B Illuminating Flare - Which is still in use today. This is the type of flare which we probably see in the present Las Vegas Mystery Light Case of April 28.

Dropping flares​

One qualification I held in the early 1980s while stationed at Yokota AB with the 345 TAS was Flare drop qualified. I think the squadron had the requirement to maintain one or two crews that were trained to drop the LUU-2b illumination flare.

C130s started dropping flares initially in Vietnam. Their main mission was to drop illumination flares along the Ho Chi Minh trail so the for fighters could see the target. They went by the “Lamplight” and “Blind Bat” call signs and had a very interesting and dangerous mission. The Blind Bat mission lasted six years, from mid-1964 to mid-1970. Initially, flights originated at Da Nang, South Vietnam, and routinely overflew the North. In the spring of 1966, the flareship mission moved to Ubon RTAFB, Thailand. By that time, stronger air defenses had forced the USAF to restrict flareship flights to the southern part of North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos.

A good history of these operations can be found at the following link:
https://media.defense.gov/2011/Mar/24/2001330120/-1/-1/0/AFD-110324-027.pdf
For us, dropping flares were not so dangerous. All of my missions were training flights out of either Clark AB, Philippines or Kadena AB, Okinawa. The pictures below are of one mission in 1983 from Kadena in which we provided illumination for a Marine A-6 practicing his night bombing on a small target island off the west coast of Okinawa. (Irisuna Island ???) We flew a long left hand racetrack at around 6,000 feet.

The heart and soul for dropping flares was the launcher. I think it is known as the LAU-74 Cargo Aircraft Launcher. (The fighters dropped the same flare using the SUU-25 flare dispenser) The flare that we dropped was the LUU-2B and we could carry a bunch, dont remember how many, but well over 100.

The LLU2s were an illumination flare and should not be confused with the infrared threat countermeasure flares of today. North Vietnam introduced the first infrared surface-to- air missile (SA-7) in South Vietnam in May 1972. The only thing we had to counter it was the signal flare gun. All the aircraft at that time had one flare gun and cartridge, stored on the flight deck. It was the navigator’s responsibility to load the gun into the flare port before takeoff and take it down after landing. At some time, they did away with them, late 1970s I believe. I am really not sure if they were effective anyways, only to give us a sense of security in being able to do something besides die.

Parked on the Hazardous Cargo ramp across from the fire station at Kadena AB, we receive our load of LUU-2b flares. The launcher had already been loaded aboard. (Madden photo)

Loadmasters checking the flares. Believe we carried a minimum of four loadmasters for a flare mission. (Madden photo)

Checking the paperwork on the flares (Madden photo)

The timer the loadmasters would set in to determine when the flare activated (Madden photo)

Checking out the flare timer (Madden photo)

The timer set by the loadmaster, in coordination with the navigator. Sets “feet to fall” before the parachute is ejected, igniting the flare (Madden photo)

LUU2B flare (Madden photo)

Truckload of LUU2B flares (Madden photo)

The crew chief manned the fire bottle while we loaded (Madden photo)

All hand loaded. That is the navigator in the crew entrance door getting checked out on loading them. (Madden photo)

After loaded, the copilot got engine start clearance and we were ready to go. (Madden photo)

The loading table. The aft end of it was located around the paratroop doors. Loadmasters standing standing on the red platform would pick the flares up from the table and load the flares into tubes located on the rear of the platform. The red platform was located on the ramp. (Madden photo)

Airborne and ready to go (Madden photo)

A good shot of the loadmaster standing on the launcher loaded on the ramp of the aircraft. The flares would be rolled down the table toward the ramp. (Madden photo)

Here we go (Madden Photo)

Picture taken from the ramp door, looking forward in the cargo compartment. The launcher occupied about four pallet positions and the ramp. The ramp would be lowered then raised so the launchr would make contact with the ramp door, holding it in place. In an emergency, we could dump the whole thing by lowering the ramp and unlocking the locks. Raise the nose of the aircraft and hopefully it would slide out on the rollers. Had to coordinate that so the loadmasters would not be standing on it when it left the airplane. (Madden photo)

A LUU 2B flare illuminating the ocean (Madden photo)

LUU-2 Flare​

The LUU-2/B visible light flare was initially certified for operational use on
August 5, 1968 and was used extensively in the Vietnam conflict. The LUU-2/B Aircraft Parachute Flare (Fig A-8) is 36 inches long, 4.87 inches in diameter and weighs approximately 30 pounds, about the same size as the Mk 45 flare. It replaced the Mk 24 Mods and Mk 45 Mods aircraft parachute flares. The LUU-19/B is a variant of the LUU2/B that produces near infrared (“NIR”) light so that only those with night-vision equipment, such as goggles and scopes, benefit from it. The LUU-19/B (NSN 1370-01-436-7029) flare was first certified for use on July 11, 1996.

The LUU-2B/B flare has several advantages over the Mk 24 and Mk 45 flares. The most important advantage is that the candle is not ejected from the case on the LUU-2B/B. Only the parachute is removed from the case. This is accomplished by a mechanical timer instead of an explosive fuze, as is done in the Mk 24 and Mk 45. Therefore, if the timer knob should be accidentally pulled during handling when the timer is not on the SAFE setting, the timer and release mechanisms can be forcibly hand-held onto the flare housing to prevent ejection of the timer and release mechanisms. When the timer completes its cycle, the timer mechanism can be taped on the flare housing and marked for disposal. If the timer is ejected from the flare and a portion of the parachute comes out of the housing, the parachute can be stuffed back into the housing, taped, and marked for disposal.

The LUU-2B Flare has a light output rating of 1.8 x 10(6) candlepower and at 1,000 feet altitude illuminates a circle on the ground of 500 meters at 5 lux. The mechanism has a timer on it that deploys the parachute and ignites the flare candle. The flare candle burns magnesium which burns at high temperature emitting an intense bright white light. The consumption of the aluminum cylinder that contains the flare “candle” may add some orange to the light.

Flares burn at uneven rates and therefore fluctuate in brightness.

I'd already amended my previous assertion that the orange cast to the light is due to atmospheric extinction with the speculation that these flares burn with an orangish light. This seems to be because of the burning aluminum casing. Aluminum burns with an orange flame.
 

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I put this here because it looks as if it's taken from the same location as was the flares video(s). Are people in the neighborhood watching the skies? Or is this video from the same exact person(s)? There are supposedly two witness reports: One on Wed. June 22 and one on Thur. the 23rd; but that doesn't track. For two different reasons.


Another UFO is spotted over Las Vegas.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12235243/ANOTHER-UFO-spotted-flying-Las-Vegas.html

Another unidentified object in the sky has been spotted flying over Las Vegas, weeks after a family claimed 10ft aliens with large shiny eyes were in their backyard and police footage filmed a strange light in the sky.

Two beams of light can be seen in the sky, hovering next to one another in the new clip that was posted on social media.

It was filmed on Wednesday, June 22, at 10.30pm over Las Vegas. The unidentified objects were in the sky for '20 minutes straight' according to the person who filmed it.
This video was originally posted on Twitter on the Big7Media account - "A family of videographers."

The video won't embed so I'll just put the link here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/embed/video/2967413.html

This time it's the Moon peeking out from behind clouds, with Venus also visible. But it wasn't the 22nd. It was Wed. the 21st. The Daily Mail story is wrong about the date. Wed. was the 21st of June! The video was posted on the 22. Good fact checking, Daily Mail. The media makes a UFO Skeptic's life a tough one.
Moon Over Las Vegas.png
Moon phase.png



A second local resident then posted an image of their view from Thursday night, showing two interlocking white circular beams of light in the sky.
72557637-12235243-image-a-22_1687812957772.png
Was this really taken on Thursday the 22nd by a separate witness in the same neighborhood? Very Fishy. Or was it taken by the same witness on Wed. the 21st? Note that the Moon and Venus were not in this relative position on the 22nd. Is this a mistake by the Daily Mail, or did the original witness invent a second witness to give credence to his sighting?

The photo does have a copyright mark for Big7Media and the story has another error, so I'll say it was the Daily Mail that made a mistake. I'm having trouble with my Twitter account. I can't find this photo.


This is the second solved UFO case involving the Moon we have here on Metabunk.

It used to be if you said a witness was really seeing the Moon, you'd get shouted down by UFOlogists. "It's impossible for anyone to mistake the Moon for a UFO." ("You silly old Skeptic, you.") But now we have proof that it is possible for a witness to mistake the Moon for something mysterious. And to have a strong emotional reaction to the sighting.

See:

Slow, Splitting UFO - Wilminton, CA​


https://www.metabunk.org/threads/sl...ton-ca-moon-through-clouds.11835/#post-252170
 

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Everyone does, the number of tweets you can watch has been limited.
Worse yet, one cannot anymore read tweets without an account. I refuse to create a Twitter account (or an account on any other social network) so I lost a source of information (mostly about Russia-Ukraine war, the only thing I used twitter for, but also tweets linked here on Metabunk).
 
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