Dutch Pilots Flying Over The Pacific Ocean Spot Red Glow

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Nutso
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Dutch Pilots Flying Over The Pacific Ocean Spot Red Glow

Post by Nutso »

Between Alaska and Japan.
Glowing lights under the clouds.
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http://www.pbase.com/flying_dutchman/pacific_eruption
Last night over the Pacific Ocean, somewhere South of the Russian peninsula Kamchatka I experienced the creepiest thing so far in my flying career.
After about 5 hours in flight we left Japan long time behind us and were cruising at a comfortable 34.000ft with about 4,5 hours to go towards Alaska.
We heard via the radio about earthquakes in Iceland, Chile and San Francisco, and since there were a few volcanos on our route that might or might not be going off during our flight, we double checked with dispatch if there was any new activity on our route after we departed from Hongkong.
Then, very far in the distance ahead of us, just over the horizon an intense lightflash shot up from the ground. It looked like a lightning bolt, but way more intense and directed vertically up in the air. I have never seen anything like this, and there were no flashes before or after this single explosion of light.
Since there were no thunderstorms on our route or weather-radar, we kept a close lookout for possible storms that might be hiding from our radar and might cause some problems later on.

I decided to try and take some pictures of the night sky and the strange green glow that was all over the Northern Hemisphere. I think it was sort of a Northern Lights but it was much more dispersed, never seen anything like this before either. About 20 minutes later in flight I noticed a deep red/orange glow appearing ahead of us, and this was a bit strange since there was supposed to be nothing but endless ocean below us for hundreds of miles around us. A distant city or group of typical Asian squid-fishing-boats would not make sense in this area, apart from the fact that the lights we saw were much larger in size and glowed red/orange, instead of the normal yellow and white that cities or ships would produce.
The closer we got, the more intense the glow became, illuminating the clouds and sky below us in a scary orange glow. In a part of the world where there was supposed to be nothing but water.
The only cause of this red glow that we could think of, was the explosion of a huge volcano just underneath the surface of the ocean, about 30 minutes before we overflew that exact position.
Since the nearest possible airport was at least 2 hours flying away, and the idea of flying into a highly dangerous and invisible ash-plume in the middle of the night over the vast Pacific Ocean we felt not exactly happy. Fortunately we did not encounter anything like this, but together with the very creepy unexplainable deep red/orange glow from the ocean's surface, we felt everything but comfortable. There was also no other traffic near our position or on the same routing to confirm anything of what we saw or confirm any type of ash clouds encountered.

We reported our observations to Air Traffic Control and an investigation into what happened in this remote region of the ocean is now started.

Two photos included, hardly edited except for watermark and resize. Note that photos are taken with extremely high ISO (sensor sensitivity) so quality might be a bit poor. Also an overview of our route + marking of the location is included.

Now I'm just hoping that if a new island has been formed there, at least it can be named after me as the official discoverer. :)
That would be pretty cool!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... night.html
Video in the link.
Dutch pilot JPC van Heijst explained on PBase how, five hours into the ten-hour flight, they spotted an intense flash of light like a lightning bolt, directed vertically up in the distance.

This was then followed by a deep red and orange glow 20 minutes later.

And the experience left van Heijst somewhat perturbed, owing to the lack of an explanation for what happened.
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Re: Dutch Pilots Flying Over The Pacific Ocean Spot Red Glow

Post by RK_Striker_JK_5 »

Hmm, looks like the supposed locations for Atlantis were way off.
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Re: Dutch Pilots Flying Over The Pacific Ocean Spot Red Glow

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Weird. Doesn't look volcanic to me - surely a volcano would produce one or two spots, maybe three, if lava vented from different places. But that big mess of different spots?

But I'm clueless what else it might have been. Too bright for bio-luminescence to be seen from that height, I'd think. What does that leave? An island with a fire raging on it, maybe?
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Re: Dutch Pilots Flying Over The Pacific Ocean Spot Red Glow

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Kaiju coming? Maybe we should build giant robots...
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Re: Dutch Pilots Flying Over The Pacific Ocean Spot Red Glow

Post by Mikey »

The wizards have finally raised the lost continent of Mu.

Seriously, I can only imagine it is some type of widespread transient luminous event, or rather a series of such. A sprite judging by appearance and seeming area, though certainly at a considerably lower altitude than that at which they usually occur. Whatever phenomenon accounts for the formation at the lower altitude would probably account for the variegation in color as well. An article on TLE's.
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