UFO video in Arizona from Reddit

[jarlrmai]

Reddit seems excited about this

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/c5fcp7/spotted_by_my_friend_last_night_in_arizona/

But it looks to me to be an internal reflection from one of the lights in the foreground, of course any suggestion of that in there is downvoted to oblivion.

 

[Trailblazer]

Reddit seems excited about this

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/c5fcp7/spotted_by_my_friend_last_night_in_arizona/

But it looks to me to be an internal reflection from one of the lights in the foreground, of course any suggestion of that in there is downvoted to oblivion.

It doesn't look like internal reflection to me. The movement doesn't seem right for that.

 

[Mick West]

But it looks to me to be an internal reflection from one of the lights in the foreground, of course any suggestion of that in there is downvoted to oblivion.

It looks like a plane to me. There's a bit of an optical illusion with the large camera movement at the start where the foreground is confused with the distant skyline. But it's not actually moving around, just flying slowly right to left, blinking a bit, like a plane.

 

[Trailblazer]

It looks like a plane to me. There's a bit of an optical illusion with the large camera movement at the start where the foreground is confused with the distant skyline. But it's not actually moving around, just flying slowly right to left, blinking a bit, like a plane.

Up to about 28 seconds it is hardly moving in relation to the distant lights (it stays more or less above the highest of those lights). Then it moves quite rapidly to the left. Consistent with a plane heading towards the camera and then turning to the right. This is a very rough and ready animation taking grabs every 5 seconds and aligning with the distant lights. You can see that from frame 7 (which is ~31 seconds into the video) the object is moving much faster to the right.

I haven't taken masses of time to zoom and align the images perfectly but the relative motion is plain (no pun intended!) to see.

 

[Trailblazer]

And I see somebody else has already done a better job of stabilising the video, showing the same thing (from Reddit comments)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym8csRZ9JNo

However, the stabilisation is off around the 9-10 second mark, where the phone is moved rapidly, making it appear that the object is moving fast too. If you compare to the distant lights, it is still almost stationary.

 

[jarlrmai]

if it's a plane do we have enough info to use flight tracker to show that? A person saying they took the video has posted, I have asked them for rough location and date/time.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Single light, with with no anti-collision strobe. Distinctive orange color. Flickering. Drifts. Gets brighter, which means it is heading toward the camera. Mysteriously disappears.

Sky lantern, with the fire about to burn out. Relatively close; perhaps only a few hundred yards at the end. It's moving in a straight line, but diagonally to the camera. It's moving from our right to our left but also moving toward the camera. It also appears to gain altitude. It may have still been ascending slowly; hard to tell. Or might be entirely a perspective effect. As it gets closer these relative motions appear to get faster because of the perspective effect.

It drifts from our right to our left. The fire almost goes out then re-ignites. It gets brighter, and appears to gain altitude - because it's moving toward the camera. Then the fire goes out.

 

[jarlrmai]

Single light, with with no anti-collision strobe. Distinctive orange color. Flickering. Drifts. Gets brighter, which means it is heading toward the camera. Mysteriously disappears.

Sky lantern, with the fire about to burn out. Relatively close, probably only a few hundred yards. It drifts from our right to our left. The fire almost goes out then re-ignites. Then it starts to drift toward the camera and the fire goes out.

Watching that stabilised footage, it does look like it drifts.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

The camera motion near the beginning - which some people interpret as the object accelerating then "stopping on a dime" - is not a camera pan. It's the person holding the camera stepping forward and to the left.

 

[jarlrmai]

I think an overlay line from the object to the horizon might help with that.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

There's a version with sound which adds something...

https://peervideo.net/videos/watch/73a2c09c-ae1a-49a4-8083-4ca3f27452b5

That red light just rose straight up into the air and has now stopped right there.

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The lantern ascended to an altitude where it found equilibrium between the air pressure inside and outside the envelope. It drifted in the wind in a straight line, but diagonal to the camera. The right to left relative motion didn't become noticeable until it got closer. It may have still been ascending, but more slowly. Hard to tell.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

We launched some Chinese Lanterns in order to film them to show what they look like. Many people mistake them for UFOs, so this is posted as a references to help people determine whether what they have filmed is a Chinese Lantern or something more mysterious. I also do a bit of acting to imitate a typical UFO video. I am not quite sure what kind of accent I had in mind.

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Too bad it's out of focus.

Sort of in focus


The 4th of July is coming up. It's a bit early for the fireworks stands to be open, but not impossibly so. Anyway here's some MUFON members with the sky lanterns they bought at a stand.

 

[Trailblazer]

Single light, with with no anti-collision strobe. Distinctive orange color. Flickering. Drifts. Gets brighter, which means it is heading toward the camera. Mysteriously disappears.

Sky lantern, with the fire about to burn out. Relatively close, probably only a few hundred yards. It's moving in a straight line, but diagonally to the camera. It's moving from our right to our left but also moving toward the camera. It also appears to gain altitude, but that's a perspective effect. As it gets closer all of these relative motions appear to get faster because of the perspective effect.

It drifts from our right to our left. The fire almost goes out then re-ignites. It gets brighter, and appears to gain altitude - because it's moving toward the camera. Then the fire goes out.

I agree that a lantern is a strong possibility. I think there is a change of direction though, as it does appear almost stationary relative to the lights on the horizon at first, before moving increasingly rapidly to the left. Possibly encountering a different wind direction or stronger wind as it ascends?

Also I neglected to notice earlier how towards the end of the video the apparent motion is more upwards, suggesting it is quite close to the camera and passing nearer to overhead. The stabilised video is a bit unclear here, though, as it does not cope with the zoom out very well.

I had a quick look to see if I could geolocate the video but no luck so far. The Reddit thread says it was taken in Jerome, AZ (or maybe Cottonwood), "overlooking the Verde Valley".

 

[Mick West]

I had a quick look to see if I could geolocate the video but no luck so far. The Reddit thread says it was taken in Jerome, AZ (or maybe Cottonwood), "overlooking the Verde Valley".

The Verde Valley includes Cottonwood. I'd think this is taken from Jerome, looking East

 

[Mick West]

Rough panorama.

 

[Trailblazer]

Rough panorama.

Maybe a close match? http://lincolncastricone.photodeck....d89536fd-the-verde-valley-from-jerome-arizona



The video could have been taken from one of the buildings on the hill to the left, which is Hampshire Avenue, here: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.7484366,-112.1114875,110a,35y,71.05h,76t/data=!3m1!1e3




Stepping back a bit, that hillside looks like a match, both the shape and the patches of vegetation (note especially the two prominent dark areas just below the saddle), but pinning down the exact location isn't easy. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.747...4!1sRZ-R98jPVGifm1yatpQV5A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

[Trailblazer]

My best guess is that it was taken from the rear deck of one of the houses on the east side of East Avenue, around here: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.748264,-112.1105692,224m/data=!3m1!1e3

At a couple of points (eg 0:13 and 0:37) you can see cars driving along State Route 89A in the bottom of the valley. The lights visible at the left at the end of the video seem to be the stores/studios prominent on the hilltop in the picture above.

None of which really helps to identify the light, but it does show which direction it came from: it first appears above the centre of Cottonwood, or at least in that direction, and it moves slightly north of west. Cottonwood is about five miles away: this line is my best guess at the correct bearing to where the light first appears, based on the nearby ridgeline.





The video was posted to Reddit on Tuesday June 25 at 21:08 UTC, 14:08 Arizona time, and it was described as "last night". So that means it was probably late on Monday June 24, Arizona time (UTC-7), in other words likely early morning on June 25 UTC.

According to earth.nullschool.net, there was virtually no wind at Jerome at 0600UTC: just 1km/h and coming from 10 degrees ie just east of north.



Three hours earlier, it was coming from the southwest:


Which seems to be at right angles to the apparent drift of the lantern, if that's what it was. But I don't know how accurate this is in mountainous areas.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

My best guess is that it was taken from the rear deck of one of the houses on the east side of East Avenue

I agree. Best not to say more.

As for the wind... Tricky stuff, wind. Is there a new way to measure surface wind? Without an anemometer at a weather station, I mean? I've already tried to get the wind conditions in that area through the National Weather Service site and it either gives you data from Sedona Airport or from Love Field in Prescott. Those seem to be the nearest weather stations and they're both a dozen or so miles away in different directions. Does the site you linked to really know the surface wind direction/speed in that exact area in Jerome?

Just for curiosity sake I've looked at 3 day records for two different weather stations in my home area... Las Vegas: At the airport and a dozen miles to the west. There are differences of as much as 90 degrees in wind direction between the two at the same time.

 

[Trailblazer]

Does the site you linked to really know the surface wind direction/speed in that exact area in Jerome?

No. It uses data from the NOAA's weather model. GFS, as far as I know. That weather model has grid points 18 miles apart, so the resolution isn't enough to give accurate wind directions in a given spot. If there is a strong overall flow it is probably close, but at the time in question the wind seems very light and variable across that part of Arizona.

 

[Scaramanga]

Why does the video end just as the object is getting close enough to identify ? If there's one thing that tells me an object is not in the least bit mysterious its that sort of abrupt ending for no apparent reason...as happens with so many UFO videos. And it leads to the obvious conclusion that the object WAS identified but we're just not being shown that bit.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

It ended because the fire went out and the sky lantern disappeared from view. There was nothing more to see.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

More sky lantern videos.

This is a good one. Multiple lanterns launched from the neighborhood to the left and below. Bad language because the camera guy is apparently cursing a camera malfunction.

This is a helicopter chasing a sky lantern. It's a clip from a TV show. That music at the beginning is familiar but I can't place it. Not Unsolved Mysteries. What show is that?


This YT video was uploaded in June of 2008 because it was similar to the case below. But it is NOT a video from this case. There was no video in this case below.

Edit:I've found a longer version. In this one it's even more clear what it is. It won't embed.
https://youtu.be/nFb63xaedRs



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7465041.stm

A police helicopter crew has spotted what is described as an unusual aircraft in the Vale of Glamorgan.

The helicopter was above St Athan, which is home to an RAF base and close to Cardiff International Airport.

But three-man crew could not capture any images before the object vanished over the Bristol Channel on 8 June.

South Wales Police said the helicopter did not give chase and described the crew as very experienced. The sighting has been reported for investigation.

The helicopter was hovering in the sky at 0040 BST above the base, waiting to land.

A police spokesperson said: "The crew are very experienced and responded in a professional manner in relation to what they saw.

"In today's skies, there are a wide variety of aircrafts which come in a range of different shapes and sizes and in all probability, this sighting has just confirmed that one of these was in the area at the relevant time," the spokesperson added.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said it had heard nothing about the incident.

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There was no video from this case, but it is interesting because this case was solved.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7471724.stm

Wedding couple sparked UFO alert

Guests at the wedding made a wish before each glow lantern was lit
Special glow lanterns set off at a wedding could have been mistaken for a UFO by police officers in a helicopter.

The three-man crew spotted an unusual object in the sky above St Athan on 8 June in the Vale of Glamorgan.

It made headlines around the world but it was only when newlyweds Lucy and Lyn Thomas saw reports on honeymoon that they realised what could have happened. The lanterns were lit in Cowbridge and floated off towards St Athan, close to an RAF base and Cardiff airport.

"There's no doubt in my mind it was our lanterns," said Mr Thomas, 30, a salesman from Llantwit Major in the Vale of Glamorgan.

"We went on the internet on our honeymoon in Turkey and saw a report about this UFO. I thought, 'oh no, it was exactly the same time and I remember they were going straight towards St Athan way'."

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In 2016 another police helicopter spotted something in the same area of Wales. This case is less clear but I suspect this is a sky lantern with the fire gone out. It's not visible to the eye but there's still enough heat for the infrared camera to see it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...olice-helicopter-creates-twitter-speculation/

An Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) has been spotted over the Bristol Channel sparking online speculation about Little Green Men.

It is unlikely a crew of errant aliens were enjoying a whistle-stop tour of Great Britain but the UFO sighting has left many Twitter users speculating about what it could be.



The National Police Air Service St Athan in South Wales tweeted footage of the UFO explaining it was not spotted by local air traffic control.

@NPAS_StAthan added the object was very hot and moving against the wind, tweeting: “Any suggestion [sic]??

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Moving against the wind? That's a tricky call.



Another solved case in Texas in 2013
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/uf...ere-just-paper-lanterns-wedding-flna2B9118584

A strange sight in the Texas night sky over the weekend had many people talking about fireballs and alien invasions. But, alas, the real culprit has been identified, a much more Earthly one.

Police in East Liberty County got a 911 emergency call at around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday from a person reporting "red fireballs in the sky." Responding police officers, along with a dozen locals, described seeing four orange lights moving slowly in a line high in the sky. Police scopes revealed that the objects looked like hot air balloons — complete with flames — but were much smaller and did not have the signature gondola at the bottom.


Even more mysteriously, the lights were estimated to only be a few thousand feet off the ground, and yet they moved silently. No known airplane or helicopter technology could fly that low and remain so quiet. Within minutes the UFOs were gone, having disappeared into the night. They didn't fly away but instead simply blinked out of existence; some eyewitnesses thought they had vanished behind a passing cloud and would reappear at any moment, but they never did.

Even so, the sighting wasn't over: A second batch of the strange lights soon appeared, in an identical line and in a more or less identical formation, until they too vanished in the same pattern. Baffled police contacted the National Weather Bureau, the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies, though none of them could shed light on the mystery. No unusual aircraft appeared on radar, and though weather balloons had been launched earlier that day, they were not aloft in the area at that time — and in any event did not match the UFOs description. The National UFO Reporting Center was also contacted, though they had no information to offer. [UFOs & Psychic Powers: Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

The Unidentified Flying Objects became IFOs when members of a nearby wedding party informed police that the floating, flaming objects were paper lanterns lit just after their ceremony. Such Chinese lanterns are made of lightweight paper and a candle that provides the heat that lifts the lanterns as well as the light that makes them glow. That explains why there was no aircraft engine sound, and the flame like appearance. Each lantern represented a wish made by each of the guests for the new couple. The newlyweds apologized if their wish lanterns scared anyone, and the sheriff took it in stride but noted that the lanterns might pose a fire threat, and asked the public to notify police before lighting such lanterns in the future.


This is not the first time that paper lanterns have sparked UFO reports. In October 2011 over a dozen strange lights were seen in the night skies over northern Utah. The UFOs glowed a strange fiery red as they headed north at an estimated speed of about 70 mph (113 km/h), according to one witness. A nearby Air Force base was asked if they had any experimental aircraft, helicopters or planes in the sky. Officials claimed that they knew nothing of the UFO lights, and that no air-training exercises had been conducted at that time. The mystery was solved when students at a local high school mentioned they had launched 16 lanterns just before the sightings occurred as part of a ceremony.

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And another one in Richmond Virginia in 2012

This video was uploaded by the company that sold them the lanterns. ha ha

http://www.wishlantern.com Wish Lantern were recently featured on CBS 6 news in America when the flying sky lanterns or 'wish lanterns' were released at the wedding reception of Elliot Norman and Jessica Winderweedle. Jessica, Norman and their friends and family released about 80 flying wish lanterns into the night sky to celebrate the special day and it appears that as they night sky carried them downwind they were mistaken for UFO's.

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Also from Richmond, Virginia, in 2010.


Just a single in Utah. Starts out pretty close to the camera. New Years Eve.


Christmas Eve in Belgium 2103

Utah, July of 2013

My neighbors pointed out this strange orange light in the sky last night around 10:15 PM. They informed me this has been happening every couple days since July 3rd. I was only able to get video of one light, but they say they have seen multiple lights in the past few days. We will be trying to get more video and photo's of the lights tonight.

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4th of July, 2105. Not very spectacular. Fire goes out at 3:12


4th of July, 2016 in Buckeye, Arizona

Orange glowing ball of light was captured on film. At the time of the video I was not sure what the heck it was. I was hoping it was just a plane but shortly after the video stopped, the orange light suddenly turned green and disappeared. We did not see any flashing strobe lights like you would see on planes nor did we see the object descend or climb the object stayed at the same elevation. Unfortunately we did not get the camera turned back on in time to capture the object turn to a green color then disappearing altogether. This footage was taken the night of the 4th of July, 2016 in Buckeye, Arizona. UFO was in the western sky at about 9:30 PM.

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Christmas Eve, 2018, South Carolina. Out of focus the whole time but comes with a good story

https://www.wbtv.com/2018/12/31/im-...iful-red-sphere-off-sc-coast-says-it-was-ufo/

December 31, 2018 at 2:46 PM EST - Updated December 31 at 2:46 PM
CHARLOTTE, NC (Mark Price/Charlotte Observer) - A South Carolina woman says she filmed a possible UFO off South Carolina’s Kiawah Island on Christmas Eve, and other witnesses are stepping forward on social media to report they saw the same “beautiful red sphere.”

“I’m not a nut,” wrote Debra Thompson in a YouTube post with the video. “...I just wanted to know if anyone has had any experiences in the last few days...It really is quite amazing when you see one that seems to ‘splat’ out of another dimension and change into a round shape.”

Kiawah Island is just off the South Carolina coast, about 25 miles south of Charleston.

Thompson says in the video that she spotted the object about 9:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve as she stood on the deck of her home. One five-minute video shows “an extraordinarily bright and beautiful” red ball as it bounces, stops, fades and then grows brighter.

“What the hell is that?...It looks like fire in the sky,” Thompson says in the video. “That’s so weird. It just seems like it’s observing....I don’t think it’s some kid’s toy and I know it’s not an airplane.”

TV station WCBD posted Thompson’s video on Dec. 27 and reported four days later that the station had “received several emails from people who believe they may have also seen the mysterious object” in eastern South Carolina.

Even more people posted sightings on Facebook, including some who say they saw it in Ladson, North Myrtle Beach, Summerville and Edisto Beach, where someone told WCBD a room inside their home “lit up brighter than the full moon at about 6 a.m.”


Thompson says she has also heard directly from witnesses, including one who “saw something strange in the sky last night while driving on the highway.”

Some social media commenters have offered more down-to-earth ideas, guessing it was a drone, a Chinese lantern or a weather balloon.

Thompson has disputed those theories on YouTube and Facebook, saying the object was flying, “not floating.”

“It was dead still that night and crystal clear,” Thompson wrote Sunday. “There wasn’t a sound outside except for some owls. Not even a breeze. This was very high in the sky and it intelligently moved.”

The web site UFO-Hunters.com says UFOs have been reported at least twice before off Kiawah Island since 2009, including a 2012 instance in which the object was described as “a very red round light.”

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[Z.W. Wolf]

This is a good one. The best view starts around 0:50.

For more than 30 minutes, nearly 20 large orange fireballs, slightly smaller than a hot air baloon could be seen travelling from west to east across Casselberry, FL from 10-10:30pm on January 20, 2016. at a high rate of speed. The objects seemed to be travelling as high as low flying planes at a steady speed on nearly the same path, They would flicker and were obviously on fire.

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Ontario,Canada Aug 2014

It looked like a stick figure that came up from the trees then it kinda formed in to the shape of a large fire ball... bright orange in color no sound .there was one after another both very similar At first we thought it was a plane on fire They Hovered and slowly moved away in the distance

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Comment

Dirt Church3 years ago
Lol my bad Chinese lantern I'm in st Catherine's and set them of from Grantham avenue south and the head toward hartzel rd or toward the qew and that is exactly what they look like sorry

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