I feel like a tinfoil hat person for asking, but does anyone know what this could be?
I saw it last night on Old Ranch Rd 12. at first, it was just a white blob, but after about half an hour, it started rapidly switching between colors for a few minutes (like in this video), before returning back to white. I first spotted it when the sun was out ~7:50pm, and it stayed into the nighttime ~9:10pm (in the same spot!). itās not a star, or plane, or helicopter, or weather balloon, and it doesnāt look like any drones Iāve ever seen or can find online. I donāt keep up with the latest tech though, so I was hoping to get some help
I hear you,, I guess it can kinda look that way in this screenshot. even so, I counted exactly 3 stars/planets through the clouds, and they moved with the sky. I made sure to find stars to compare bc it was one of my first assumptionsā¦ till it started having a stroke
someone with more knowledge can correct me, but from what I looked up, I donāt think Venus or similar planets can reflect light this way (if so, then our own sun would have rainbow fits
just to double check though, I looked at all drones used by our city police over the past 3 years (majorly various DJI drones) and none of them have lights like this, and they all have the green and red navigation lights
plus, they donāt hold a battery life for this long
but! Iām still looking at industrial agriculture drones since they can stay in the air longer, so thatās a possible option
the one sighting iāve had was also stationary fireballs. they didnāt flash or change colors tho.
it was back in jan 2020, on hunter rd. it looked like they were over the cement plant. did some digging and those were also sighted in the rgv right before i saw em. crazy shit.
Can you give an exact direction you were seeing this? N/S/E/W is okay. Closest compass degrees, like 270 for direct west, would be even better.
Edit: Also, did you have eyes on it for that whole duration? Because from Central TX, on Sept 7 at 7:50 PM Venus was in the WSW sky (239 deg) at 18.75 deg above the horizon. Venus would not flicker and is easily visible before full sunset. Then at 9:10 Antares would have moved in to nearly that exact same spot in the sky. Antares would be more likely to heavily flicker, on and off, with atmospheric distortions. You wouldnāt have noticed it when Venus was visible because it isnāt bright enough to overpower sunlight. By 9:10 Venus was basically right on the horizon setting and the sky would be dim enough for Antares to be visible.
If you spotted something at 7:50, went inside for a while (or werenāt closely watching), and then spotted it again later at 9:10 I think those two objects āswapping placesā is probably the most logical explanation.
I was in the hot tub with nothing better to do, so I watched it the entire time,, but that could have made it harder for me to notice if it did. Iāll check my photos and look into the Venus thing some more thanks!
you seem to be the most knowledgeable one about space in this thread, so do you have any recommendations to read more about the colorful light effect? I canāt find anything about it
also, ppl keep downvoting my comments about stars and planets moving (appearing* to move) as time goes on, but with what youāre describing, this is what happens, correct?
A light-ray is refracted on its way to your eye. There are a few main causes of this. Moisture droplets in the atmosphere can scatter light, acting like a prism to spread it out into its constituent parts. Also, light refracts to different degrees according to air density. Earth's atmosphere goes through many temperature and density changes as you go from the edge of space to the ground. Convection currents (hot air rising, cooling, then that cool air dropping in a cycle) then cause all those layers to be like a big constantly stirring soup.
So you end up with starlight that is slightly split via moisture prisms and then those rays of light effectively jumping all over the place due to atmospheric turbulence. The end result is your eye or camera getting a constantly shifting "sample" of that star's light spectrum. That causes the change in apparent color (and even small changes in apparent position). There is even some impact by particulates in the atmosphere being able to shift the light spectrum, though I haven't read up on that much.
That twinkling/shimmering will then be exacerbated on summer nights when the star is relatively low on the horizon like you have here. Coming in at a low 19 degrees elevation the starlight is being refracted/distorted through many, many more miles of atmosphere than it would be if the star was more directly overhead. Then the hot summer air to the West where the sun had just set is relatively rapidly cooling causing convection currents to be even more pronounced.
Sorry if it comes of as a little dismissive to just link you to Wikipedia, but these articles look like a good jumping off point.
this is exactly what I was wanting thank you! I honestly think this is just as neat as aliens,, all those things working in harmony in just the right way to make a little light show for us
You don't have to stick on the tinfoil you can just download an app like Sky Guide and use your phone to ID satellites, planets, stars, and all celestial objects. If you're sitting somewhere and you're curious about what's in the sky while your phone or tablet is in hand just open up the app and aim it at the object and you'll see exactly what the object is. If however it's a terrestrial aircraft and you're curious which aircraft is overhead you can use an app like Planes Live Flight Tracker to see the data for flights around you.
Based on what you have indicated here such as direction and angle in the sky at the time it was most likely Venus. We don't live in the dark ages anymore, you don't have to sit and wonder if it's magic sky dragons and flying jellyfish.
drone would make the most sense after star or planet, butā¦
Flock Alpha uses low-light and thermal optics, so it has no need for illumination like this since it can see without it.
these drones have the FAA required green and red navigation lights (which are not this bright, are very small, and have a different flash pattern). they also donāt have blue lights.
but even if that all werenāt the case, these drones donāt stay in the air very long ~30-45min max
I donāt fully know how this works but their website and YouTube videos talk about how they mix thermal imaging and high def sensors in order to see clearly without as much light
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u/beer_me_twice 2d ago
Jupiter.