Bizarre Question
This post would be a stretch even in Off Topic, but this seems like as good a place as any to stick it, so please bear with me.
First, my child is prone to peddle BS. Elaborate, bizarre tales he will embellish and elaborate for months or in a few cases, years until the victim buys the bullshit and becomes the butt of ridicule as gullible. Actually, this is a proud family tradition going back generations. But as family elder, I claim and defend Mastery, so he doesn’t try very often these days.
Today he claimed to see spy drones frequently. He further claims several instances where he’s observed them at 20 – 30 feet, but generally they occur as stationary star-like points in the night sky.
This one’s so easy to bust it’s embarrassing. Tonight I dragged out my good quality but thirty year old Bushnell binoculars and went hunting in the night sky.
It took about five minutes to spot the first anomaly. I live under the DFW flight path so finding a plane for comparison took only a moment. This is no plane. What I saw is a steady white light with flashing red and green. I located a star and observed what you’d expect so the scintillating colors don’t seem to arise from the optics. The anomaly is in focus about mid range whereas the “proper” stars focus at the extreme as expected.
I located several anomalies in a few minutes. Is this due to optics or am I seeing something spooky?
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Well, until you shoot one down we will never know. :1:
Maybe. But these things are sporting FAA marker lights.
It is entirely possible you are viewing geosynchronous satellites. They are several miles out there and can be affected by atmospheric anomalies.
I live 5 miles from the border of the impact area of the largest Military Base in the ( well what use to be called the free world). free world. You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve see!
In-Comeing!!! 😯 Duck and Cover! 😉
I live half-way between Shepard AFB (once the largest pilot school in the world) and the F16 factory in Fort Worth. I’m 30 miles from Fort Wolters and in the sixties, it rained Chinooks at my house. Toss in Dallas Naval Air Station, DFW, Love and so forth, and I’ve seen wild things in the sky. I was out in the middle of nowhere driving a twisty back road and got buzzed by an F16 at maybe 500 feet back when the F16 was the hottest thing ever. One of the things I take pride in my life is that I didn’t piss myself that day.
The FAA has authorized 30,000 remotely piloted aircraft in US airspace, and I keep seeing stuff in the paper about this sheriff’s department or that city got a Homeland Security grant to buy drones and by damn, I wanna see one. I can see the first units of a 1,000 plus unit wind farm from my front door. Maybe somebody thinks them evil terrists gonna blow up the windmills. Makes sense from a bureaucrat’s (insane) point of view.
Back on topic.
I also lived under the DFW flight path for 18 years. There is no end of what a body can see in that area.
A solid white light and red and green flashers is a real attention getter. No answer on that one.
Once, many years ago, I was outside on a very dark night, no moon, staring at the star field for no particular reason. Then I noted one of the stars began to move….travel in a straight line across the sky. No flashing lights. It was a stable tiny white light. I watched in amazement for about a minute. Eventually it stopped again, and seemed to blend into a cluster of stars. It wasn’t bright, nothing special. It was just a single star among many stars, except it began to move. I have no answer for this event. I never spoke of it because this was in the 1060’s and UFO sightings were so plentiful they were a joke.
I do believe a lot of the visual phenomenon we sight in the sky have rational explanations, or are part of our secret government projects. Others cannot be explained and probably never will be, at least in our lifetime.
I do agree with the thesis “The best evidence we have for the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe, is the fact they have never stopped here!”
Will aliens ever invade and conquer the United States, with advanced weapons? Personally, I don’t believe Mexico has the technology to pull it off…but I do believe at the current rate of illegal border crossings, they may eventually gain enough votes to reclaim California!
Just my candid thoughts.
No problem. Clear communication is hard enough face to face. Writing opens all kinds of avenues for confusion. I’ve long suspected that smilies make it worse. Texting is just asking for trouble, and I’m waiting for the day Twitter starts a war. Actually, maybe that’s already happened.
Sorry. Must have picked the wrong smiley.
Whoa! How wonderfully clever you are.
While I obviously appreciate humor, I’m asking a legitimate question. I’ve observed something I don’t understand, and that doesn’t make sense. I’m trying to determine if optics play a part before I look for another explanation.
Can the natural “twinkling” of celestial objects appear as a steady white light with rapid, colored flashes when observed through cheap optics?
Is it reasonable that different celestial objects can be observed as clearly focused at significantly different focus points when observed through through cheap optics?
I think all we can conclude is that the family elder is upholding the old family tradition 🙄
Sorry Hoot. Tequila only, less’n I can lay hands on decent mescal.
As for wives, I learned better twenty years ago.
Maybe it’s the worn. Get ya going for sure.
John…I’m from the Republic of Texas and know of this situation. There is no reason to be alarmed.
I want you to switch to a single malt liquor for a period of two weeks, then slowly titrate back onto blended whisky.
You might consider getting your son on this regimen as well. Ah hell…get your wife to join you too. That way you
can all watch UFO’s and eat pop corn together.
Kindest regards,
Uncle H 😯 😯 t
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Dated thread but funny when I read it.
I am a Radio Control guy and have done airplanes and more recently helicopters for about forty years. We always had these weight carrying contests with our airplanes and about 20 years ago we started getting visits from a Darpa drone guy wondering how we got our planes to carry so much weight. Anyway – they are creating some cool drones that fly every which way imaginable so don’t be surprised by anything you see at this point. The MAVs are just amazing.
http://www.darpa.mil/
All that aside there is a documentary shows occasionally on cable TV about UFO’s that were spotted over southern Illinois about a decade ago that they still replay. I have knowledge of what was actually going on and it cracks me up to this day to think about how much money was spent trying to figure what the UFO’s were (and they never have) and creating this documentary. Someone should have figured it out that investigated it.