Sup, first post... was looking around for somewhere to discuss Brisbane UFOs. This seems like a spacey Australia oriented forum no? Not nessesarily alien-UFO, i mean just UNIDENTIFIED, coz i don't know what this was that i saw and i'd like to know!


ok, here's the copypasta i already posted elsewhere:

Today (Friday 6 April 2007) at around 6:45pm in the car on the way home from Brisbane City, traveling north around Boondall my family and i spotted something odd in the sky.

The sun had gone just below the horizon, so the clouds were dark with shadow but the sky was still relatively bright. In the sky out to the East was a thin white plume, quite bright as if it was cloud reflecting sunlight. It looked a lot like a comet, but i figured it was just the beginnings of a high altitude plane contrail - i figured it was higher than the clouds so it'd still be picking up the sunlight - thus why it was so bright compared to the darker clouds around.

As a few minutes went past, it struck me as strange that the contrail behind this thing wasn't getting any longer. Also the whole thing seemed to be getting BIGGER, BRIGHTER and more spectacular.

Everyone in the car (3 of us) were perplexed at what this could possibly be. I noticed a momentary sunlight reflection off the fusalage of whatever this craft was - it became apparent that it was approaching fast. We pulled over the car to get a better look at this.

The plume behind this thing was not a contrail at all, it was FIRE. We paniced momentarily as we thought maybe it was an plane on fire in the sky, but there was no smoke trail or anything, just a plume of fire behind it.

Someone suggested it was a rocket, comming in from space. And honestly i wonder. Because i know of NOTHING that can burn fuel for so long.

This thing was flying seemingly horizontal, higher than clouds (it momentarily disappeared behind clouds), had a plume of fire behind it that stretched for what i'd say was 5-15x the length of the craft itself. What else produces such a long plume? No aircraft i've ever heard of. Afterburner flames arn't so long are they?

Let me set this straight, this was not a dump-&-burn. The huge plume behind this craft lasted for as long as we watched it, and we watched it fly overhead for 10 minutes! They do dump-&-burns over the riverfire festival and they last mere seconds.

As the craft & plume got closer the plume could be seen well, it was shimmering like fire - like rocket fuel. You could see patterns traveling down the plume, like small gaps - natural fluctuations in the fuel supply or who knows.

It eventually disappeared behind a large stormcloud to the south, and we all got in the car and continued home hoping that we might be able to see it come outof the other side of the cloud - but it was a big cloud and i'm sure it was too far away by the time it emerged.

The whole time it traveled in a straight line, going south-west. Pretty much a straight line towards the nearby Brisbane airport, but it was WAY too high to be landing there. It would have flown straight over it.

What do you think this was?

i really am at a loss as to what it was, a scramjet test-vehicle or something?!

It looked like a rocket. There is nothing else i can think of that can produce such a large plume for so long a time. I don't know who to tell or ask about this, Australian Airservices? i really want to know what it was. And i'm concerned that something so strange/cool could be flying around without me knowing about it. I mean, there are no Spaceports near Brisbane haha... uh, that i know.

What do you think this was?
i wish i had cameraphone eh.

Did anyone else in Brisbane see it?

Wecome Roid!! Brilliant post, fascinating experience.

I am in Sydney so couldn't have seen it. You sound like you have a pretty good grasp on the basic mechanics of known aircraft, so your experience is all the more intriguing. I hope someone else saw this and posts it somewhere (if not here)! I will search the net for the next couple of days to see if I can find any relevant information about it to post here.

Coincidentally, the other day (April 1) I was watching TV and there was an ad for the upcoming news stories on channel 7 that included a clip showing a news report being filmed outside at dusk when a green lemon-drop shaped UFO came arching across the screen behind the reporter. I was stunned. The ad said something about this being either a UFO caught by the news camera or maybe the space station. In my heart I knew dang well that it was not the space station. It looked very much like a symmetrical oval-type UFO. And it was green!

I missed the news so the next day I scoured the internet looking for the story. I have read a few posts by others with the same amazement and curiosity as me, but not much more than that. One of the thread I found pointed to the channel 7 clip of the object (but I couldn't get it to play) http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/seven/index.html .

Someone mentioned it was probably the ISS and I guess most people just accepted this. I have looked and looked for any more information about it or further analysis, but I can find none. I did find a thread on a forum where a few people discussed seeing it. They never came to a conclusion, but one did say: "I saw the space station pass over Darwin a few days ago, rather slow moving and it shows as bright white, not green."

This "ufo" was caught on a news clip and shown as an ad as well as its own feature on the news to tens of thousands of viewers and no one seems to have cared or followed up. It is an interesting commentary on the level of overall public consciousness about such intrigues.

that link only keeps videos from the past few days, sadly the April 1st videos have already been pushed off by newer videos.

yeah i don't know where to post this stuff, i wish i did.

It's too bad the channel 7 footage of the Sydney UFO is gone, thanks for letting me know.

And I appreciate you posting your sighting here. I am VERY happy to have anyone with a sighting post it here (or if you do not want to join the forum, please write me at metawake@aus-city.com with a description and I will post it). With enough response I would organize it into cities, etc. In searching the internet I could find no current continuous listing of sightings where people can check if there are corroborations to their own sightings.

Greetings fellow forum-ers, Mr. Roid.

I too saw this, along with two or three of my friends, on our balcony in Kangaroo Point, which faces South-West. The odd thing about our sighting was that the rocket, or whatever you'd like to call it, was almost perfectly due west from us. It seemed to be a fair distance, and from our point-of-view, and with the sun being in the position setting nearby, we couldn't see the actual object, only the plume of fire.

Seeing many sunsets from our balcony before, we assumed it was cloud being reflected upon by the sun, as we had seen similar before, but we soon noticed it moving upwards from our view, and being a completely different colour to nearby clouds.

During it's movement, of which we only saw a minute or two due to noone noticing it for a while, it did not change shape, colour, size, etc.

It then dissapeared behind a large storm cloud and that was the last we saw of it.

I immediately did several scours of the net to see if anything was planned for that day and saw rumours of a rocket being tested from adelaide, but that wouldn't make much sense if it had been travelling upwards from nearby.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your post Ratt! It does help to hear the specifics of your sighting and to know that you and Roid shared the sighting from different perspectives. I can only wonder how many people saw it and what they thought!

Hopefully anyone doing a search on this sighting will find this post and know that what they saw was something unusual and special.

hey i just did a search in google couple nights ago to see if anyone else saw this.

I was driving on waterworks road in Red Hill, pulled up at the set of lights next to the old skate arena and saw it almost directly infront of me flying horizontaly away into the distance.

it than dissapeared behind clouds like others have said.

Now im not going to speculate on what this was, but the thing that bemuses me is why things like this dont get mentioned on the news? There are cameras in different locations in the city, i guarantee this is on video somewhere, and it should be open for public viewing.

Iv seen a bit of nightsky activity of late, and im not the only one out there who have noticed these oddities in our night sky.

check this website out for a list of reported sightings.
http://www.ufoinfo.com/sightings/australia.shtml

Thanks sharing your sighting, Staygold -- that makes 3!

Thanks for the reported sightings link, too!

Maybe it was the easter bunny

Hi,

My husband and I saw the same thing a bit earlier travelling along Wynnum Road, Norman Park, it was westward towards Samford, we watched it for about 7-8 minutes then the cloud cover hid it. We lost track of it then.

It looked like a comet tail but can't have been as it was too low.

Looked all throught the papers and couldn't find anything until i read you note.

cheers
ccbrissie

Thanks heaps, ccbrissie! That makes 4 sightings of the same "UFO"!

it's been a while, and now i think what i saw back then was a plane with a short contrail - illuminated by the sunset.
i've been told that planes can have short contrails. And i think the contrail of this plane was possibly illuminated by the sunset to it's firey red orange colour that made it look like flame.

Still, it was spectacular, and i'm glad at least 3 other groups thought it was spectacularly interesting enough to seek out this thread on the internet to talk about it

I put all of the data into google earth and it's cool how it all matches up. It seems to be something traveling in the general direction of south east towards Ipswich, it became occluded by cloud possibly somewhere between Lowood and Mount Cootha.