"UFOs" over N. London Today

[Long White Hat]

Anyone else see those weird floating lights being followed by the white plane?

I was in Archway and people were all stood in the street pointing up at this odd spectacle.

Probably a mundane explanation for this but they didn't look like helicopters or planes. Hot air balloons?

There's just a helicopter circling now.

[Neil]

Those damn Mooninites are more ubiquitous than David Mitchell at the minute.

[terminallyrelaxed]

There's just a helicopter circling now.

Title of a London Indie band's first single...

[Huzzie]

Any other witnesses?

Have you reported it?

[Long White Hat]

Lots of other witnesses, no one I know personally but shop owners along Junction Rd in Archway were stood in the street watching it.

Report it? who to?

It was a string of orange lights, hovering slowly at different heights. No flashing or pulsing lights like planes/helicopters have. Seemed to be at quite high altitude, with a white plane above and behind them but definitely moving 'with' them, like it was escorting them.

I am not a UFO believer but this was just a bit weird and I wondered if anyone else saw them.

[Huzzie]

Report it? who to?

.

There are lots of places to report sightings but this is the most official, most well established and just over all bestest!

http://www.nuforc.org/

Such a shame you couldn't get a pic. That is what so many will be asking, "So, there are UFO's over London, nearly everyone has mobile phones that take pics, yet no one snapped one?!" I know though that it isn't exactly the most immediate thought.

EDIT: Plus this one http://mufon.com/ .  Those two are the biggest.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

You saw a weather balloon... And nothing more.

[ccbaxter]

There's just a helicopter circling now.

Title of a London Indie band's first single...

"What's that coming over the hill, is it a copter, is it a copterrrrrr...?"

[Brutus Beefcake]

Those damn Mooninites are more ubiquitous than David Mitchell at the minute.

Were they beeping as they crossed the sky?

[Pinball]

Maybe the aliens were demanding reparations?

[Long White Hat]

See? I'm not mad

http://www.islingtongazette.co.uk/content/islington/gazette/news/story.aspx?brand=ISLGOnline&category=news&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsislg&itemid=WeED02%20Feb%202007%2016%3A56%3A48%3A657

and the rabbit-hole goes deep...

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23376226-details/Riddle%20of%20UFO%20'invasion'/article.do?expand=true

Yeah i can't do links properly

[gazzyk1ns]

Sorry this is an off-topic post, but just so you know, the second URL isn't working only becuase it contains characters which BBCode doesn't like in URLs, in this case those two inverted commas ('invasion').

If you want to replace a long URL with one clickable word, which would avoid page-stretchage like that^, then the format is:

Word

[Hugo Rune]

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23376226-details/Riddle%20of%20UFO%20'invasion'/article.do?expand=true

Replacing dodgy characters with their character codes keeps phpBB happy. Codes can be looked up here (among other places). However, it's usually more trouble that its worth.

As you were...

[Long White Hat]

Sorry, I'll try that in future. Thanks for the help.

The crapola picture in that article doesn't look like what I saw. It was weird enough for cars to stop and people to get out. I'm so pissed off I didn't take a picture with my phone. Instead I raced home to get onto my balcony on the 4th floor for a better shot, by which time they'd gone.

I've been looking into this and it seems these orange orbs were seen over Leeds on the same evening as well as numerous other similar sightings over the years. Someone please give a mundane explanation, I'm starting to go all 'Roswelly'.

They were not weather or prank balloon things; they were huge, at aeroplane altitude and seemed to be 'piloted'.

[The Region Legion]

Some kind of natural phenomena? Ball lighting? It's been stormy recently, could be that.

[Pinball]

It's just gas plasma TV in the sky.

heh, I must stop being anti-paranoid. I'll damage my 'reputation'...

[Banana Woofwoof]

I live in Crouch End, near Archway, didn't see them.  Wish they had been UFOs.  I'm just waiting for a real life Doctor Who.

[Huzzie]

Theres been lots of talk about this on an unexplained website I go to. I just could't think where I had heard about it before but of course, it was here.

[Long White Hat]

Huzzie, would you tell me the name of that unexplained website?

The things that made it seem weird to me was the plane following the lights and the helicopter which circled around for a while after they'd gone. I thought that maybe the plane dumped its flares for some reason and the helicopter was searching for fires on the ground caused by the hastily dumped flares?

But  I'm pretty certain they weren't flares as they were massive, they hovered/floated along at one altitude and didn't have smoke coming from them. Also one appeared to be above the plane and all the others were in front of it, so not in keeping with things dropped from said plane. The plane seemed to be monitoring them or escorting them away.

Also the ball lightning theory doesn't seem to fit, there were 10-15 of them, they were a comparable size to the plane, and they just seemed technological not natural.

[Huzzie]

Sorry, I should have done that when I mentioned it. Really frustrates me when pother people don't do that.

It is

www.abovetopsecret.com

[SetToStun]

Just a thought, but perhaps not too nuttty to be discarded...

Planes have a very high stall-speed, i.e. if they drop below a pretty swift clip, they also drop out of the sky (jump-jets excepted, of course). If a plane appears to be moving slowly, it's because it's miles and miles up in the air and the scrolling effect (parallax?) causes it to seem slow. If the plane was keeping pace with slow moving lights, it seems more likely that the lights were, in fact, keeping pace with the plane. You say they were orange and that this happened in the afternoon - at this time of the year, the sun goes down pretty early and gets very orange even earlier. I would say it's entirely possible that the lights you observed were reflected from the plane (therefore keeping pace with its observed speed of movement) and were glowing because they were hitting some fairly low-altitude moisture or ice-crystals.

That is 100% conjecture, of course, but sounds reasonable to me (at least it does compared to a secret super slow-mo plane tracking alien UFOs across London in broad daylight).

EDIT: And a new page too - now that's worthy of a conspiracy theory...

[hencole]

Lots of other witnesses, no one I know personally but shop owners along Junction Rd in Archway were stood in the street watching it.

Report it? who to?

It was a string of orange lights, hovering slowly at different heights. No flashing or pulsing lights like planes/helicopters have. Seemed to be at quite high altitude, with a white plane above and behind them but definitely moving 'with' them, like it was escorting them.

I am not a UFO believer but this was just a bit weird and I wondered if anyone else saw them.

Chinese lanterns, with a plane that just hapeened to be in the area at the time. There was a report in the paper today about them being mistaken for UFO's this week. They get mistaken for UFO's at glastonbury by most people. They weren't moving quickly right and were orange?

[Huzzie]

Yeah, I was going to stay Chinese lanterns earlier but I didn't want to be a party pooper.

They are very commen now and most people make them home made, so they aren't really Chinese Lanterns. They just seal a candle in a plastic bag and when it heats the air it takes off, as Chinese Lanterns do and as Hot air balloons do.

They could be really dangerous though, couldn't they? I mean, what if they landed on something flammable before the candle goes out? Couldn't it burn through the bag and set fire to whatever it landed on? For that reason I believe they are illegal in many states of the US.


Yeah, they have become very popular over here lately, which is a shame.

[hencole]

I've seen some really good ones that let of fireworks as they fly along.

[Huzzie]

Proper Chinese ones?

I don't think I have seen one before, although thinking about it I must have done after all the Chinese New Years I have been to at China Town.


I really think it is a shame that people are hoaxing in this way though. So much romance and imagination is extinguished if you see a mundane answer immediately to anything which would have previously been unexplainable.

[lactating man nips]

I wish i hadnt followed Huzzie's link, I''m now worrying about the mercury in my fillings.

[Huzzie]

I wish i hadnt followed Huzzie's link, I''m now worrying about the mercury in my fillings.

Hahaha:-)

There are some right wankers on that site! I have seriously seen people put things like power cuts down to Al Qaida or Aliens and dead lightbulbs down to ghosts. Crazy! Really!

EDIT: There are also those who desperately need to feel special so they have told themselves (and will tell anyone who will listen) that they are "indigo children" or that they are abductees who have been chosen specially due to their higher intelligence or spirituallity!

[Long White Hat]

Jesus, pretty sure they weren't Thai Lanterns. I've seen those things, they are a candle in a bag. These lights were at plane height and big and bright, comparable in size to the plane. At that distance those lanterns would be a speck of light.

People were standing in the street pointing, traffic stopped, strangers talked to each other, grown men wept (OK, I made the last one up) these things were BIG.

I'm starting to think I should just forget about it. Until the invasion.

[Hypnotoad.]

Amazing how accounts differ, a "witness" over at ATS said they were "metres" above the buildings

[weekender]

I've been wondering this for the past three days, through a combination of sobriety and wonderment....

...but, isn't the moon in the wrong place?

I usually keep an eye on the moon, when I know where it is it makes me happy as I can stare at it.

Over the past few days though, it's been in the wrong place on the horizon.  I know the position changes with the seasons, but this is a real "HOLD ON, THE MOON WAS OVER THERE AT THIS TIME YESTERDAY, AND NOW IT'S SOMEWHERE ELSE".

I know about time as well, I'm not just going "Cor, it's 10pm and the moon is in a different place to where it was at 5pm", because that's explainable.  To me, over the past few days, the MOON has BEEN in the WRONG PLACE.

Just wondering if the aliens have anything to do with it.