Sometimes there is slight cloud cover 2/8ths or thereabouts, other times the sky is clear, the blue flashes rather appear like lightning but can't be as there have been no build up of storms. Equally there are no electric trains here, all diesel.
Wonder if Tonks has seen these type of flashes when night flying? :think:
or anyone else for that matter.
Think Chris Trott could be on the right lines, electrical discharges in the atmoshere, but what causes it?
I used to be an optimist but with age I am now a grumpy old pessimist.
When actually, you're probably seeing the ISS (International Space Station) or another Satallite. See them all the time. They can be seen for about 5 seconds, or 5 minutes.
Dont think its the ISS. My son and I watched it twice while in Hawaii
its move very sedately from Horizon to Horizon right across us - very bright white (like a star magnified x100) Folks there say its a common sight and
with a good telescope you can make out the SP arrays and the shuttle when its attached.
At the high north latitudes of the UK, what you're most likely seeing is basically big static discharges within the Ionosphere. These occur all the time, but most often occur on nearly cloudless nights with high upper level winds and light lower level winds which creates a lot of friction between the layers of the atmosphere. With the ionosphere being it's strongest during the night, it becomes highly charged and eventually all that built up static has to go somewhere.
Next time you're out, try to take an AM radio with you and tune it to the lowest end of the scale (500Hz is the low end on US radios) and see if you hear bursts of static over an unoccupied frequency at or near the same time of the discharges you see. If you hear them, then it's ionospheric discharges. If you don't, it's probably a meteorite or aurora.
I remember something similar from a long time ago (perhaps 25 to 30 years - long before the ISS).
Then, living at my parents, to the north of Walsall (right on the northern edge of the West Midlands), I would often notice flashing light, late at night even with the bedroom curtains closed.
On several occasions, I watched late into the night to see what appeared to be lightning at tens if not hundreds of thousands of feet in altitude. There was no associated thunder.
I have observed the Aurora Borealis, but this was quite different, distinct flashes of an electric blue light.
As a scientist, I have never come across any other description, let alone an explanation of this.
I am lucky, I spent a total of 3 weeks at Space Camp/Space Academy during my youth and made several good contacts who turned me onto atmospheric science. Since then, in addition to aviation, weather and atmospheric phenomenon have been my thing. The information I provided is through an amagamation of knowledge learned from the people who research this kind of thing every day. I give them the credit more than anything for being able to answer this question.
