(shropshirestar.com UK)
Retired policeman Mike Lindop was disturbed during an evening of television watching at his home in Telford – by a UFO.
Mr Lindop was watching TV at in his home at Moorhouse Close, Wellington, when he looked out of the window and saw a strange tubular object in the sky.
It was traveling at speed and issuing yellow and orange flames, but made no sound. He went outside to get a closer look with his wife Carol Ann and son Darran, and they saw it disappear towards Newport.
He said: “It was about 7.30pm when I saw it. It was a long, cylindrical thing, about 1,000ft up in the sky and it must have been travelling at more than 100mph.I’ve never seen anything like it before and am completely lost to know what it is. It left me feeling quite uptight. It seemed to be on fire but it looked nothing like an aircraft and made no noise at all.
“I wish I’d had a camera but by the time we thought about it, it had gone. I’d be surprised if nobody else has seen it.”
UFO expert Phil Hoyle said the sighting matched many others over recent years, although he had not had any recent reports.
Mr Hoyle, head of the Shrewsbury-based UFO Investigation and Research Unit, said: “It is an extremely common description. There have been many reports of this object over Wellington and Telford and in fact worldwide.
“Shropshire.” Calls to mind that Looney Toons where Daffy Duck is Holmes, and Porky Pig is Watson, and they are pursuing the “Shropshire Slasher.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049131/
Anyway, I realize you are simply the messenger, and these comments simply address the account:
He said: “It was about 7.30pm when I saw it. It was a long, cylindrical thing, about 1,000ft up in the sky and it must have been travelling at more than 100mph.â€I’ve never seen anything like it before and am completely lost to know what it is. It left me feeling quite uptight. It seemed to be on fire but it looked nothing like an aircraft and made no noise at all.
1.) It is virtually impossible to gauge the distance of an unfamiliar object against the sky without using triangulation. This should be obvious to anyone who takes the time to think about it. In the case the object is seen beneath a ceiling of a known height, it’s possible to give a limiting distance, if the object is seen at or near zenith – e.g., “the object was nearer than 5000′
2.) Similarly, without knowing the distance, it is impossible to accurately gauge the speed. It is only possible to estimate the angular rate. This is fundamental. For example, Hynek wrote about this in The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry.”
It was travelling at speed and issuing yellow and orange flames, but made no sound.
This sounds like a bolide, to me. First of all, it was trailing flames, which is somewhat atypical for UFO accounts. Secondly, it was soundless, as a bolide would be. Third, it was traveling slowly enough that he was able to exit the house and continue watching it, according to the account. It is well known that meteors seen before midnight travel more slowly than meteors seen after midnight, since they are traveling in the direction of the earth’s orbital motion, and must “catch up” with the earth (meteors seen after midnight travel much faster). If it was a piece of space junk re-entering the atmosphere, it would be moving even slower than a meteor, on the order of 10,000 mph less, or more.
Ufology is replete with cases where bolides are interpreted as UFOs. The most well-known is the reentry of the Soviet Zond spacecraft over North America. William Hartmann wrote about the Zond case in the Condon Report, because it generated enough different observations so as to be useful for this type of analysis.
I’m reproducing the salient part, here, and leaving a reference.
“On 3 March 1968 the news agency of the Soviet Union announced that the spacecraft “Zond IV” had been placed in a low “parking orbit” around the earth and would soon be launched into “outlying regions of near-earth space” (Sullivan, 1968). The mission was unsuccessful. At about 9:45 p.m. EST on 3 March, hundreds of American observers near a line from Kentucky to Pennsylvania saw a majestic procession of fiery objects with sparkling golden orange tails move across their sky. The spacecraft was disintegrating upon re-entry. Most observers saw two or three main pieces, while observers near the end of the path saw more. These objects were soon identified by NORAD as pieces of the Zond IV probe or its rocket booster and this identification was finally confirmed 1 July 1968″ (Hartmann: 949)
Selected Conceptions Generated by Zond IV Re-entry*
1. Report absence of any sound -20
2. Report “formation” – 17**
3. Estimate altitude or distance 7′ – 10**
7. Report rocket- or cigar-shape, or “saucer” shape – 7**
8. Report curvature or change of direction or motion – 6**
9. Estimate altitude or distance at UFO expert Phil Hoyle said the sighting matched many others over recent years, although he had not had any recent reports.
Of course it does.
Mr Hoyle, head of the Shrewsbury-based UFO Investigation and Research Unit, said: “It is an extremely common description.”
Ditto.
There have been many reports of this object over Wellington and Telford and in fact worldwide.â€
“This object.” Typical ufologist.
Maybe there’s more to this that I don’t know about, but this is all the info I have to work with. Nothing about the article suggests anything otherworldly, or even anomalous.
Best,
RDB
I hosed up that table pasting it in. Trying again:
Selected Conceptions Generated by Zond IV Re-entry*
1. Report absence of any sound -20
2. Report “formation” – 17**
3. Estimate altitude or distance 7′ – 10**
7. Report rocket- or cigar-shape, or “saucer” shape – 7**
8. Report curvature or change of direction or motion – 6**
9. Estimate altitude or distance at
Screw it. I don’t know what the problem is. I converted it to plain text. There shouldn’t be any code to screw up the paste. Anyway, the URL is:
http://ncas.sawco.com/condon/text/s6chap02.htm
page 951