Posted on 01/29/2007 8:00:04 AM PST by maquiladora
It's hard to draw a surfer's attention away from the next wave, but whatever was in the northwest sky Friday evening around 6:20 p.m. drew a crowd along Kewalo Basin and Ala Moana Beach Park.
Honolulu resident Peter Hollingworth described as two lights circling in the sky, about 45 degrees above the horizon.
Video of one of the lights was recorded from the Channel 2 SkyCam.
“These two little fireballs with a stream behind it,” said Hollingworth. “Looked kind of like a shooting start but it just kept going. They changed directions a few times, at first it was coming in then it turned, then it went out then it came back in again"
Hollingworth was surfing with his 12 year old son when the unexpected show began.
“I was a little concerned. I told him come over and sit with me - this might be the last surf session we ever have together because this thing's coming straight for Honolulu. It looked deadly to me it was kind of spooky.”
So what was it?
The National Weather Service says nothing showed up on their radar at the time of the sighting and the Federal Aviation Administration didn't report anything unusual.
The U.S. military conducted a missile defense test off of Kauai Friday evening but the test didn't begin until 7:20 p.m.
“This in a sense is an unidentified flying object,” said University of Hawaii astronomy professor Gareth Wynn-Williams. “It's something in the sky that's moving that we haven't identified.”
Wynn-Williams believes there's a simple explanation behind the UFO’s.
“It's probably a contrail of some kind,” he said while watching video of one of the lights at his Kailua home.
The professor says contrails are caused by high flying airplanes burning hydrogen based fuels. One of the byproducts of the fuel exhaust is water.
“The air is very cold so the water condenses and forms like drops very quickly and then these drops stay behind the plane until eventually they warm up and they evaporate.”
Wynn-Williams doubts little green men from Mars are behind the UFO’s.
“Some people just think differently than scientists and they like to look for the fanciest most exciting explanation. Those people would like to think it's little green men, I think that's very unlikely."
According to published reports this is not the first time a UFO has grabbed the attention of Hawaii residents.
In December of 2004 an unexplained streak of light was captured by a camera on Haleakala moving southwest to northeast. No official explanation has been given for that UFO either.
Changing direction and circling are actually easy enough to explain, though. Wind direction shifts at different altitudes and, seen from the ground, it might in fact appear that the balloon was circling and changing directions.
"Extremely simple answer: weather balloons, used for measuring upper-level winds. "
Aww ... now you've gone and spoiled all the fun ...
"As opposed to an expensive "pallor" trick?"
Takes a lot of money to look that cheap!!
So what is your more plausible explanation?
"Forgot about the contrails.... No explanation for that."
Any reason that a weather balloon might have to release a package of particles ? Something like that could explain it.
Well, yeah ... you might want to leave a smoke trail to help in spotting/tracking the balloon, or to provide a means for spotting/tracking wind shear regions. Just a guess, though.
Plausible? We don't need no steenkin' plausible. You can ask the professor ...
"Some people just think differently than scientists"
Can anyone familiar with Pacific flying comment on whether the Pacific tracks would take an airliner through this area if it wasn't bound for Hawaii or the South Pacific Islands?
On the Atlantic side, everything's routed north over Canada and Ireland and would get nowhere near, say, Bermuda unless that was its destination.
Several years ago in Maui I saw a very strange rapidly blinking light in the evening sky. The light came from a fixed point, was very bright, and flashed from red to blue and back so rapidly that it appeared purple. As I had recently visited the top of Haleakala, where there are telescopes controlled by the Air Force, I figured that the light I was seeing might be laser communications from a military satellite in space.
Did any of you see the Doctor Who (new) episode with the reference to MJ? This thing was supposedly the last "human" in existance, and it was a flat piece of skin with eyes and a mouth. It was in that condition on purpose through surgery.
"How come aliens never wear clothes or have furniture?'"
Maybe they lost it all to their ex-wives in a nasty divorce?
ping
Pinging the list.
(Thanks to Sam Cree.)
You must be from New Jersey.
Maybe they know that the Demrats have taken control and are planning to invade..... ;^}
Sure are a lot of "nothings" happening lately.
I think they're looking over the properties and will issue Orders to Vacate soon.
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