Research and Investigation into Anomalous Light Phenomena
on and over Lake Ontario, Ontario, Canada
It was just past 9 pm on Saturday night, 24th November 2001, and I had returned from a family birthday celebration in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The weather had warmed up considerably and the temperature was registering just on 18C. I decided to take a walk down to the beach, armed only with my binoculars. The wind was very strong and causing considerable wave activity on the lake.
I reached the beach and looked some way west toward Lakeview Generating Station in Port Credit (decommissioned 2005) and was amazed to see a line of enormous golden light balls - some double - descending to the horizon. I had been watching the lake for nearly five years and recall the balls of light rarely as large as these appeared to be.
I watched through binoculars for a few minutes, then decided to take a chance and run back to the house and grab some camera equipment plus the diffraction grating, so that I could make an attempt to get some frames showing the spectra of these "lights".
Throughout the time I was shooting video and taking stills with the Pentax on the telescope, there were aircraft evident coming into their final approach for Pearson International Airport. The aircraft were travelling east to west (right to left) from my point of view. The distance between my observation point and the centre of the runways at Pearson International Airport is 61.5 kilometres or 38.2 statute miles.
The camera was set up about five feet above water level, so that would suggest a visual horizon of approximately 3.1 statute miles. This, according to the chart provided by T. Roy Dutton.
Meanwhile, these large light balls were steadily descending, one after the other, slightly east of where the aircraft seemed to be coming in to land. I caught an aircraft on video tape in the latter part of my lake watch but it was so faint as to barely show up. The light balls, in contrast, were amazingly bright and moved very slowly down towards the horizon, giving me ample time to record them.
The wind was getting stronger by the minute and it was difficult to hold on to the two fairly lightweight tripods under such conditions. Then the sand started to be blown around, so that, every time I wanted to make a lens change, or put the grating on another camera or the telescope, I had to run back up the beach to base camp and this was very time-consuming!
I set up the Sony Digital-8 video camera and left it to record. The camera's lens cap was constantly tapping the metal tripod due to the strength of the wind. The deep amber colour of the light balls does not display so well in video recordings.
As with the still photos (below the video) taken on the Pentax SLR, the light balls appear very bright and distinct from the faint, distant illumination of the Toronto skyline some 28+ miles distant on the Northern shore of the lake.
As the video camera was recording I was interchanging lenses and telescopes so as to try and optimise spectra. However I was finding great difficulty even locating the horizon through the grating attached to the Televue Pronto telescope with the Pentax MZ-7 SLR attached. The film used was Fujicolor 1600. Very little light actually comes through the tiny grating which measures only 1.25 inches in diameter.
The resulting images were not very clear but the spectra seemed to suggest that the light balls were some distance out over the lake, away from the North shore. The distance between North and South shore at that point is approximately 28 statute miles.
Below are some of the scanned Pentax MZ-7 SLR photos of the anomalous light balls or "orbs". The orbs are seen coming down to the actual horizon (lower part of the photo) - and the upper part of the photo essentially shows the same image but as spectra produced by the orbs as seen through the ROSS grating.
Note that the distant North shore skyline lights have now been broken down into mainly red and green faint light.
The North shore skyline lights (approximately 28 statute miles distant from camera) show very faintly in comparison with the much brighter - seemingly closer to camera - illumination of the descending light balls/objects.
Click on the images below to view full size versions:
