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A couple of days ago I was laying on a trampoline in North West London looking at up at the early evening sky. The sun was setting and the area of sky I could see was framed by the oval shape of the safety netting on the trampoline. I’d noticed recently that after a few moments of staring up into the sky, from the same position, I can often make out birds cruising around very high up that you’d never usually notice. The trampoline netting does a good job of blocking some unwanted light across your field of vision. The birds are difficult to spot at first but when you’re eyes adjust you can clearly make them out.
On this occasion I noticed a single bright spot which was unmoving. It looked like a star, (possibly Jupiter) but I was surprised to see it at just after 8pm and that sky was still very blue. It was very small about the size of the smallest gap you can see between a pinched forefinger and thumb when held at arms length but contrasted sharply with the blue sky. I watched it for a while and in doing so noticed more single points of white light and one slightly orange one they were all of a similar size.
The three points of light were to the left of my field of view and were in a triangle about 1cm held at arms length. They didn’t move but stayed pretty much in relation to each other. It reminded me immediately of these balloons seen over NYC.
(
Source: https://youtu.be/Wh-tCAY0u7I).
Coincidently the points of light I saw were in almost exactly the same arrangement seen in the NYC video at around the 6 minute mark. (See screen grab) but where the left point of the two was orange tinged and slightly fainter. (Was it Mars?), and the bottom point of the triangle was slightly closer to the other two.
The one orange point was to the right of a white point to the center of my field of view and over the span of a few minutes they slowly changed positions as if rotating around each other.
I watched them for over 5 minutes and was considering how best to record what I could see. To give an idea of how small the points were I asked my 5 year old to look up and see what I could see and she, distracted, bored, not attentive, couldn’t see anything at all!
I assumed my phone camera wouldn’t be able to pick them up (it’s a 1st gen iPhone SE) and so I decided to watch a bit longer before going to get a better camera. After considering that I wouldn’t miss anything if I went indoors I got my old Canon 20D with a 17-85mm lens and tried to take some photos. I thought including the trampoline netting would be helpful for scale but I struggled with the settings and focus and just couldn’t seem to get a decent image of what I could see with my eyes.
Here's a link to the a RAW image of my viewpoint which to my eye should include the light points mentioned above. (although I can’t see anything at all in it!).
Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18en4mzzGk8Oj7tU94aentM2JPnICPQ87/view?usp=sharing
After another 5 mins or so the all the points of light had faded and were imperceptible. My thought is they were balloons highlighted by the setting sun that just eventually drifted out of view, but what was interesting is the apparent lack of motion of most of the points of light from the beginning to end of what was probably around 10 minutes.
So this seems to point to a real problem of data collection when people see things they can’t easily explain (Jupiter) when seen possibly in combination with mundane objects (balloons) forming a “triangle”. If someone can see something clearly with the eye, but virtually not at all using a fairly decent camera and lens from a static position what hope is there of recording something truly extraordinary?
On this occasion I noticed a single bright spot which was unmoving. It looked like a star, (possibly Jupiter) but I was surprised to see it at just after 8pm and that sky was still very blue. It was very small about the size of the smallest gap you can see between a pinched forefinger and thumb when held at arms length but contrasted sharply with the blue sky. I watched it for a while and in doing so noticed more single points of white light and one slightly orange one they were all of a similar size.
The three points of light were to the left of my field of view and were in a triangle about 1cm held at arms length. They didn’t move but stayed pretty much in relation to each other. It reminded me immediately of these balloons seen over NYC.
(
Source: https://youtu.be/Wh-tCAY0u7I).
Coincidently the points of light I saw were in almost exactly the same arrangement seen in the NYC video at around the 6 minute mark. (See screen grab) but where the left point of the two was orange tinged and slightly fainter. (Was it Mars?), and the bottom point of the triangle was slightly closer to the other two.
The one orange point was to the right of a white point to the center of my field of view and over the span of a few minutes they slowly changed positions as if rotating around each other.
I watched them for over 5 minutes and was considering how best to record what I could see. To give an idea of how small the points were I asked my 5 year old to look up and see what I could see and she, distracted, bored, not attentive, couldn’t see anything at all!
I assumed my phone camera wouldn’t be able to pick them up (it’s a 1st gen iPhone SE) and so I decided to watch a bit longer before going to get a better camera. After considering that I wouldn’t miss anything if I went indoors I got my old Canon 20D with a 17-85mm lens and tried to take some photos. I thought including the trampoline netting would be helpful for scale but I struggled with the settings and focus and just couldn’t seem to get a decent image of what I could see with my eyes.
Here's a link to the a RAW image of my viewpoint which to my eye should include the light points mentioned above. (although I can’t see anything at all in it!).
Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18en4mzzGk8Oj7tU94aentM2JPnICPQ87/view?usp=sharing
After another 5 mins or so the all the points of light had faded and were imperceptible. My thought is they were balloons highlighted by the setting sun that just eventually drifted out of view, but what was interesting is the apparent lack of motion of most of the points of light from the beginning to end of what was probably around 10 minutes.
So this seems to point to a real problem of data collection when people see things they can’t easily explain (Jupiter) when seen possibly in combination with mundane objects (balloons) forming a “triangle”. If someone can see something clearly with the eye, but virtually not at all using a fairly decent camera and lens from a static position what hope is there of recording something truly extraordinary?
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