03 Mar 2022   
      
   The moral seems to be -- once you know there is something to be seen   
   you are willing to make the effort to see it and you know how to see   
   it when you see it. As a kicker -- even a blind man could see it.   
   I say that as someone that's usually down to 10% of normal vision.   
      
      
   I'm getting used to seeing odd things in the nighttime sky over Melb.   
   It's a rare night I got out for a couple hrs and see nothing   
   un-normal.   
      
   Last night was not that unusual. I tend to start going out around   
   8.30pm local. It seems even at dusk a few things fly over the area.   
   Action tends to stop before midnight.   
      
   The night started in spectacular fashion. A huge yellow arrow-shaped   
   flaming fireball flew almost over the house. It might have been   
   mistaken for some kind of meteor but it was so damn weird. The front   
   of it looked like a ">" with yellow and orange light behind followed   
   by what seemed to be flames. The area behind the "arrow head" had a   
   black region. SO it wasnt all on fire. And I thought -- maybe my   
   imagination -- it cracked.   
      
   It was just the kind of thing you might suspect was some neighbor   
   throwing a flaming bag of rubbish or shooting a flaming giant arrow   
   over your propety as some kind of joke.   
      
   But I don't think it was any of them. Almost immed aftyer a little   
   yellow light flew in from the N and then started to curve and go off   
   to the E.   
      
   Like other dim lights we see around here, it moved across the sky   
   around the speed of a high-altitude jet. This is not inconsistent with   
   satellites, so that's what these particular things might be.  It's   
   only slightly unusual they remain dimly illumunated from one horizon   
   to the other. Usually, satellites ramp up illumination when they hit a   
   region above your location that is getting daylight or moonlight.   
   Sometimes even Earthshine is enough to light them up. But the   
   brightness usually follow a "light curve" that ramps up from nothing,   
   remains bright for a shortish time, then ramp down again.   
      
   But it *is* unusual if a dim light cross the sky in any way from east   
   to west. That is going counter to the Earth's rotation, something that   
   is very difficult for satellite launch companies to do since it   
   requires getting the rocket to go 10% faster to overcome the slow-down   
   caused by the rotation of the earth in the "wrong" direction.   
      
   It's also unusual to see satllites stop and hover or change direction.   
   In the S hemisphere it's also "impossible" to see a satellite come   
   from the S and return to the S. That kind of motion does not orbit   
   around the centre of the Earth. Supposedly a satellite favorite.   
      
   But with 2 weird-ass things within 1 minute you *have* to suspect they   
   are connected. If one it weird they are both weird.   
      
   But things got better. The big attraction of the night was a "stop and   
   hover".  The action started after I'd been cooling my heels gulping 10   
   coffees and wandering around, shifting positions, for maybe 1 hr. It   
   must have been getting close to 11pm.   
      
   It's happened 2-3 times in the past few years, after I became   
   "sensitised" to unusual activity in the sky. This time a very bright   
   yellow object came from the SW. Not an unusual dir for a sat, of   
   course. But it started out moving fast nr the horizon where I first   
   spotted it. And then it started to slow. A sattelite in orbit would be   
   expected to do the opposite because parallex.   
      
   It got closer and closer. Moving slower and slower. And then when it   
   was getting pretty close to my pos, and maybe 70 deg above the   
   horizon, it started to dim.  And dim. And dim. Until I could barely   
   see a tiny little dot almost directly above me.   
      
   Of course if this thing was at orbital heights -- e.g. 100 km up --   
   then even a few degrees off the zenith means it's above a spot 10s of   
   km from me.  I'm not too sure these things actually are hovering over   
   my area.  Maybe only over Melbourne.   
      
   As I said, this has happened a couple times recently. So I expected   
   the sequel.   
      
   After maybe 10 sec after the thing went dark there was a bright violet   
   flash almost directly above me.  It was so bright it seemed like a   
   halo wider than the moon round the spot where I last saw the little   
   light.   
      
   I waited some more. Flash.   
      
   Some more. Flash.   
      
   What the heck was it up to? Is it shining a laser-like light in my   
   direction?  Can it be flashing so bright in all directions that it   
   seems so bright in my direction?   
      
   I know some sats use lasers to get distance to ground. Some of them   
   can also measure the distance to the bottom of shallow lakes and seas.   
   I always thought those lasers where likely green/red and maybe very   
   very dim.  But maybe they can be very very bight and violet/blue.   
      
   But this thing was apparently hovering up there for maybe 5 mins at a   
   time and so it isn't a sat.   
      
   But here's another wrinkle. Something *else* I've seen in my region   
   are very very quiet hellicopters that are fitted out with unusual   
   arrays of lights -- for no obvious reason I can see. One or more have   
   big yellow lights on the front. I've even seen one hovering over a   
   nearby mosque (obvious implications) showing just the yellow light,   
   and after a while turn back on its red/green/white nav lights and fly   
   off on patrol.   
      
   So this thing hovering up there MIGHT just MIGHT be a military chopper   
   with engine silencers on 11 and all lights off, just playing silly   
   buggers with me. Or something.   
      
   But then there was the PREVIOUS night even weirder.   
      
   That night it was overcast with clouds blowing in off the Southern   
   Ocean.  Turns out this might have been part of a huge rain event   
   that's presently swamping large parts of Queensland and New South   
   Wales.   
      
   But as far as I was concerned it hosted an interesting battle of wits   
   between The Yellow Orbs and the Flashy Airplane.   
      
   Flashy Airplane is an unusual light aircraft we see from time to time   
   in my area. It flies AFAIK only at night. It is easy to spot becuase   
   it flies mostly low and has a very loud and distinctive engine.  It is   
   also visible for miles because -- like some other strange conventional   
   aircraft we see around here -- it has a weird array of lights on   
   it. In this case a kind of big triangle in white/yellow LED's or   
   similar that flash on and off.   
      
   I can't think of a reason aircraft should have such arrays given they   
   also have pretty bright nav lights that are eaither steady   
   red/green/white or sometimes flash to indidcate they are coming toward   
   to or going away.   
      
   It's like they are trying to signal someone about something.   
      
   On the night in question Flashy had turned up over to the West and   
   proceeded to do some orbits. Every now and then it did an orbit around   
   the whole region, sneaking around each horizon and normally ending up   
   to the NW.   
      
   I've seen this before, too. It now means to me "someone is hunting   
   something".   
      
   My working hypothesis is these aircraft are "chasing off drones".  Or   
   nearest equivalent. There is some kind of flight corridor from the   
   Melbourne Airport over to my west.   
      
   If you do the stats turns out yellow lights maybe mostly harmless, but   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)