Subject: Re: Croxteth, Liverpool, UK Earth Light
From: "sean_b_palmer" <sean@...>
Date: 06 Apr 2006 15:38
On Thu Apr 6, 2006 2:41 am Bill Bimson wrote: > I am new to this list, Dave Clarke reccomended it. Welcome! Rather a prestigious introduction, if the Dave Clarke you mention is the one that I'm thinking of. > Haven't found my way all the way around it yet, especially > your website, but I certainly intend to. I have already > found some stuff that I find very interesting. And I'm posting more all the time. I have quite a few articles that are nearing completion, just requiring some final touches. One, for example, is about the Taurus Mountains light reported back in 1900; another a transcription of an old Will-o'-the-wisp essay from 1777. > I examined a UFO case for MARA back in 2001 and the conclusion I > came to was that it was an earth light, only because I couldn't > find any other explanation for it. Would you mind having a look > at the webpage sometime and let me know what you think? Am I right in thinking that the event has been captured by observers that were out seeking anomalous events? They were aware of the ley line in the vicinity so this appears to be the case. That's rather a mixed blessing if so. My initial reaction was that the behaviour sounded like a flare, which is not something that you have on your list of interpretations. The slow downwards motion, three minute duration, and bright orange colour are consistent with that that; as is the slow lateral movement and eventual demise around the horizon. But there are also the characteristics of shape and colour shift, and the periodic variability in brightness, which may be inconsistent with that interpretation. The latter, the flashing of the object, may be a film artefact--did you test, for example, the moon as a reference object to see if it exhibited the same behaviour on the film? As for the shape and colour, I'm not sure how vivid these characteristics were since I've not seen the film, so it would indeed be great if I could see it. But even then, the observer reports would probably be more helpful: did they feel that it behaved in such a way which is inconsistent with a flare? If so, how so? Have they seen flares before in the area? Have they seen any flares before at all? Apart from that, it does seem that your other conclusions about it not being an astronomical object, aircraft, or other more outlandish thing are correct from the data that I can see. If it's not a flare, or something else that neither of us have thought of, then it may well be an earth light. And as with all possible earth light sightings, the question then becomes: what next? I think there are generally two important things that can be done with amateur sightings of possible earth lights. 1) Record the event as well as possible and then submit it to as many cumulative anomalous incident databases as possible, rather than letting it be a standalone; and 2) possibly conduct further research in the area to see whether the event was sporadic or not, using as much equipment as possible to record further events in the latter case. Another thing that I would do, if it were a friend of mine that had made the sighting, is go back and ask again and again for more information extracting every possible detail that they can recall. Wind direction, approximate location, any irregularities with the camera, past observations by the same witnesses, the direction of the lateral movement, and so on, are all useful to know: the more info, the more value. The correlation that you make with the pulsating, blinking, flashing motion and earth lights is certainly an interesting one--and I remember from the Project Hessdalen report that Erling Strand mused about whether their radar was interacting with some of the objects that they were scanning since they'd only give echos every second sweep. Something for further study, that's for sure. Anyway, thanks for posting this sighting and I hope my feedback has been of some use. I'd like to see the video if I may, especially if you can post a digitised version of that online somewhere. And welcome again to the mysterylights list! Cheers, -- Sean B. Palmer, mysterylights.com Homepage: http://inamidst.com/sbp/