weird flikering light in the sky

[kareina]

Last night, around midnight, while clovis_t and I were out for a walk, we noticed a weird flickering light just above the hill. At first I wondered if it might be attached to the tower at the top of Chimney Pot Hill, but it was too far south for that. Further walking and coming around the corner revealed that it was actually in the sky, to the south east of Hobart, much too high to be attached to a tower, but no where near over-head (perhaps 20 degrees above the horizon?). It changed colours as it flickered, blue, red and white, and seemed to get brighter and paler with the colour change (but if there was a pattern as which colours were brighter, I failed to make a note of it). It didn't look like a normal star or planet, but it also didn't move like a satellite does. Anyone have any ideas? massaria, do you know what would look like that in last night's sky?

Comments

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

oo-00-ooo
Sounds like a flying saucer to me!

[dd1066.livejournal.com]

southern cross got bored and came down for a visit

[kareina.livejournal.com]

If it did, it called in a stunt double first, as it was clearly visible quite a bit higher and a good way to the right of the twinkling star...

Probably not aliens...

[massaria.livejournal.com]

I've seen a similar thing a couple of years ago in Hobart when Jupiter was very close to the horizon and just above one of the mountain ranges. It seemed to flash red, green and white with varying intensity. Nothing like I had seen before and very cool, but just due to the special conditions at the time.

So from your description I would say the fact that it was stationary suggests it was a planet or star and the flickering and changing colours and brightness would be caused by scintillation which increases with atmospheric depth & turbulence. What you are reporting seems to be fairly extreme scintillation requiring lots of turbulence and a viewing angle through a lot of atmosphere, so the fact that it was low to the horizon and over mountains it is consistent. Also the fact that you could discern no pattern to the changes is typical of scintillation. So I would say you were looking at a bright star or planet through extremely turbulent atmosphere above the mountains.

Actually, if it was a planet you have been lucky because you need really specialized conditions to see a planet twinkle! Basically, because planets are not single points of light your eyes tend to average out the effect of scintillation so planets seem to be stead in colour and intensity compared to stars. (Hence the over-simplification people use to distinguish stars from planets as "planets don't twinkle".) However, if you have sufficient atmospheric turbulence you can see planets twinkle and Hobart with it's mountains and cold air hitting a landmass is one of the places you can see it if the conditions are right and the planet is low to the horizon.

Having seen it myself I know how weird it looks but it is kind of cool.

Failing that it was aliens :-)