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Subscribe to RSSVideo shows a "strange explosion in the sky" ... which was apparently a weather balloon bursting.
A smartphone video that shows a bright orb exploding in the sky sparked a UFO mystery in Sacramento, Calif., but it looks as if the mystery has been solved: It was a weather balloon.
That may sound like the quintessential cover story from the flying-saucer conspiracy, but in this case, the explanation makes perfect sense.
The video was shot through the eyepiece of a telescope by Elijah Prychodzko around 5 p.m. on Dec. 20, and aired by Sacramento's CBS13 television station on New Year's Eve. The first video clip shows the orb in the sky with a smaller object swinging around it. Prychodzko calling his nephew over to take a look, and then turned back to shoot another video clip.
"Oh my God, it just blew up!" Prychodzko can be heard saying. The video showed a haze of fragments floating in the air.
In its account of the Sacramento UFO incident, The Huffington Post said "nobody has come forward to officially explain the event." On the Above Top Secret forum, however, the discussion quickly turned to weather balloons. The most telling message was this one, attributed to the National Weather Service's Upper Air Observations Program:
"...It is very likely a weather balloon that burst. The small dot 'orbiting' the balloon was the radiosonde that was attached below it with about 70 to 100 feet of string.
"The weather balloon was likely released by the National Weather Service (NWS) upper air station in Oakland, California, at about 3:00 p.m. local time.
"Here is a video of a NWS weather balloon burst taken by a NWS meteorologist through a telescope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lG3zr0yaJw"
This video shows the flight of a National Weather Service balloon as seen through a telescope.
ESRL / NOAA
Here's a sharper image of a research balloon in flight with an ozonesonde / radiosonde instrument package attached. This balloon was launched from a National Weather Service facility at the airport in Hilo, Hawaii.
George Cline, observation program officer for the National Weather Service's office in Sacramento, confirmed that the Oakland station releases its balloons at around 3 p.m. and 3 a.m. PT — and that the flights last about an hour and a half. He noted that the timing for Prychodzko's reported sighting fits the afternoon timeline.
"That would put it right around the time for a balloon burst," Cline told NBC News.
More UFO cases put in context:
- Did UFOs fly over S.F. Bay and Brooklyn?
- Chinese UFO linked to rocket
- UFO case solved in Cincinnati
- Middle East UFO linked to Russian missile test
- Cosmic Log archive on UFOs
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
I hate to feed the crazies on this one, but that is uncharacteristically fragmented for a balloon popping, they don't tend to shatter into a million pieces.
I know it was the easy answer, but I think the weather balloon hypothesis needs another pass.
Yeah, definitely a UFO exploding, let the cover up begin!
I'm not saying it was a UFO, but too many of these "UFO sightings" get such a quick dismissive reactionary answer from the skeptic community that the debunking has holes in it.
Holes in the explanation pave the way for the onslaught of coverup and conspiracy claims that inevitably follow. Not giving a satisfactory logical explanation right out of the gate is the reason some people still believe we haven't gone to the moon. It's sloppy and it just lets this stuff perpetuate.
Yes, weather balloons do appear to 'shatter' at high altitudes. The material is less flexible but not quite rigid due to the very low temperatures. Try science, it tastes better.
In the video provided it just pops, but I did find one on youtube that better illustrates it shattering.
The smaller object was just zipping around way too fast to be connected to a "weather balloon." Those lines are pretty long - it wouldn't swing around like a yo-yo on your hand. The debris field was bright and the motion of the debris implied a large, powerful explosion. You can watch a weather balloon pop on YouTube, and while the effect is VAGUELY similar, it's not at all like this one.
The problem with the much oft used "weather balloon" theory is that it has worn out its believability and has been disproved many times since it was began by the government in an attempted cover up back in 1947.
The object in the original video emitted a uniform light across its entire surface. Your balloon n theory is complete fud. As your weather balloon video showed a white surface and did not emit light.
Mylar based weather balloons can reflect light, though it would not be uniform across the entire surface due to the balloon ellipsoid shape. Some areas would be brighter than others.
In the original video the main object resembled a light source like bulb or a star. Optics quality was not really good as no fringe patterns are observed. Regardless the object was a light source and not a reflective surface because of the uniform light distribution.
Please do a better job with your homework before posting another foolish theory.
I just think it's freaking hilarious - another weather balloon, just one more weather balloon, and not a flying saucer! Ha, ha, ha ha!!! Are you playing with us, Alan?
As Tommy Lee Jones says in Men in Black.
It does't matter how long the lines are - from the height these balloons attain, it would appear exactly like that.
Again, because of the height, you wouldn't necessarily see the ellipsoid shape - it would appear to be a sphere if viewed directly below. And given the height these balloons can attain, it would indeed appear to be directly above.
Ahh, the old weather balloon excuse.
hmm... a weather balloon that was expected to pop does exactly that and this is news? Really, Alan?
I probably wouldn't have written it up if it wasn't talked about elsewhere as a big space mystery that no one could figure out...
All of these UFO stories are nothing more then people not knowing what truly is going on. Hardly any UFO or space men flying around. It has and always will be nothing more then top secret planes, or drones, ballons, ect ect . As if martians have nothing better to do than just zip by one night, not land, or introduce themselves, or even keep hidden.
I dont believe in Flying saucers and little green men , nor is there any strong evidence for such.
Way to go Allan...
David eats free, complains & leaves his place a mess
Marma... wants to follow his "beliefs" (read religion) into the ground
your sandwiched and yet you shine .
Don't let the white noise distract you, we enjoy you too much!
Actually, I like most of what Alan writes. It's usually far better quality than much of what's on NBC news from other contributors. This was just a bit... of a departure from that.
Alan,
You go man. I enjoy your news write ups. I'd give my left arm for your job...
Have a nice weekend...
CD
Well, since people seldom look up to see what's going on in the sky above them, they're missing all sorts of interesting stuff like this. Of course, the video is fuzzy and you really can't tell anything about it, so there is no proof it wasn't a balloon, but no proof it was anything else. You'll never really know what it was, but it certainly was 'unidentified', so there's your 'UFO'.
It's just too bad the video didn't capture the flying saucer firing its ray-gun at the balloon to pop it. The truth is up there.
Wrong the truth is down there, its the Nazis living at the center of the Earth the probably did this, them and their flying saucers.
I never knew weather balloons blew up like that.
Do they, really? And why?
Being a balloon isn't as easy as it looks.. sometimes they just can't handle the pressure.
Really. Santa. There are flying saucers. I seen one next to the virgin mary in mexico.
That wasn't a weather balloon you crazy people...It was swamp gas!
Looks like a weather balloon. Maybe one day, something really cool will show up and land in Kansas City and out pops an alien. Maybe one day someone will pick up what looks like some kind of tool but made from some unknown metal. Until those days, sorry they are weather balloons.
Mohammad issued a FARTWA over Ca. Send more drones.
Weather balloon? Doesnt really appear to be a weather balloon to me. And they dont explode. Not normally anyway.
Maybe it was a satellite? Maybe a spy satellite killing a threat? These days you never know..
Maybe it was a scene from the all new Jetsons movie?
Every weather balloon explodes. Have you ever seen one land? They're meant to be expendable. Here's a sharp video of a weather balloon exploding:
http://youtu.be/mG7xFt1FpCc
It does and they do.
It kinda sucks that we still seem to be all alone in the universe.
Maybe we should be nicer to each other if this is the case.
+1
Orbital Entropic Energetic Dark Matter particle burst. That missing 95% is out there and in our backyard.
Darkmattersalot"dot"com
I would say it is a completely fake computer generated hoax, or it is something else. The one thing it does not appear to be is a balloon exploding.
It just Al Gore trying to celebrating his birthday with this faulty baloons along with his theory about the global warming...
it did look like some kind of flash,but hey its still calif. i liked the one about gilli-guy who was run over pretending to be bigfoot myself but im on bigfoots side so im partial.
That was not a UFO! It was the reflection of the US exonomy!
it's important to keep in ming that "UFO" does not equal "alien spacecraft" The former is simply a flying object that requires identification, the latter has never been discovered. I've seen UFO's many times, everyone has, but no one has ever seen an alien life form or spacecraft.
Once again, space aliens build a highly advanced craft to travel hundreds and hundreds of light years to get to earth, only to explode in mid air or crash in the desert. Must be the alien General Motors Corp.
Ever notice for fun that all these alien books and documentaries are full of top secret alien information and testimony... then at the end, the rational for no proof is that the government wont let those people with the top secret information release it? Kind of funny.
I am a UFO agnostic. Why do so many of them come all the way here just to float around for one minute, and go home? hmmmmm....
NT UFO ! WN WE ARV U WL NO IT !
During my life I've noticed that easily 'debunkable' cases, i.e., ones which have an obvious explanation such as this one, are always the ones which the media promotes...they want so give us all a funny UFO story we can all chuckle at and cue the theme song from the "X files".
But cases which have true merit and no easy explanation, of which there are thousands, quickly disappear from the headlines. For instance, whatever happened to the recent Denver case in which UFO's were apparently filmed traveling so fast they were only noticed by the photographer when he, (just by chance), happened to slow the film down? Local media went there, took video at the same location, slowed the film down and saw the same UFOs! And yet, no one's talking about that case anymore. People don't want proof, they want funny stories, and the media knows it.
People DO want proof. Show us a space alien. Show us a Bigfoot. Show us God. Until then, we'll keep dismissing you as overly imaginative.
Actually, Lance is right. There's a major conspiracy involving all the media and all the government and military officials, and they've managed to keep the coverup active for centuries now. You should be expecting some visitors from the global conspiracy soon, Lance, and then we won't hear from you any more.
Right.
And all this from a bunch of people who can't keep a botched arms deal involiving a handful of people secret for more than a couple of weeks.
What I want to know is what the tax structure is like on their home planet. If it sounds good, I'm ready to get beamed up. But I do have a few safety concerns about all those space ships that go hundreds of light years and blow up in the sky, or crash in the desert when they get here...
Wasn't the the crash in Roswell a "weather baloon" too. They sure like that explanation...
I'm no weatherometeorlogiballoonagraphacist, but we're still using weather balloons?
Yes.
Well in that case....holy crap.
Let's see...aliens develop a technological civilization (let alone develop in the first place), develop space traveling technology, decide to travel to our solar system...and explode?
A) Not much of an alien technology, if you ask me.
B) Be pretty damn disappointing to fly x light-years in craft so fragile it blows up all on it's own, let alone nerve-wracking from wondering just where along the journey it may/may not blow up....
Well, the aliens' spaceships may be lemons, but the aliens themselves sure are slippery buggers. Perhaps they shapeshift and live among us as humans? People who think aliens are visiting us simply do not even begin to understand the distances they would have to travel. Before we ever get visited by an alien spaceship, we will undoubtedly have communicated with them.
I don't know we can build ships and they occasionally blow up(to be fair technological advancement doesnt mean perfect technology), the weird thing is that if it was a UFO(disclaimer: I am not of the type who believes in UFO alien space men, just imagining) that it didn't explode with lots more energy then you saw it explode with. A antimatter ship would make a truly huge explosion, so would practically anything that can cross interstellar space, there are huge amounts of energy used to push a ship across interstellar space, not something like that which is frankly rather small in terms of energy release.