Roofus

Curtain of Light

Jan. 1, 2007 shortly before dawn Roofus photographed a rare Marfa Light's phenomenon I call "Curtain of Light" shown below in three images.  The light curtain can be seen near the right edge of the screen above a bird in the tree.  Duration of the event was at least 3 seconds eliminating lightning and sprites as possible sources.  These images are black and white but had you been present to witness the event you would have seen a colorful display.  Such displays have been reported by several observers but this is the first time such an event has been captured by my monitoring stations.  The nature of this display provides yet another clue reinforcing a new evolving theory regarding the true nature of Marfa Lights.   More about that in the future.

Actually, this light curtain (a better description might be "light fog") phenomenon was captured at least once before by Roofus as shown in the following sequence from April 22, 2006.  We start with a before picture taken at 23:22:01 CST to show how the sky looked.

Then a strange spot of light appeared in the sky for a few seconds.  Duration of saved images would seem to rule out lightning as the source and there were no other lightning strikes that night.

That strange oval pattern of light was followed about seven minutes later by a "light fog" in the same location as the similar pattern that appeared on January 1, 2007 (as shown above).

  Mysterious patterns of light

Roofus enabled the first ever collection of statistical data revealing ML behavior.  Below are sample photographs from 2005 including electric MLs, Lightning, Sprites and even a giant jet (Giant jets are an extremely rare type of lightning phenomenon.  The giant jet event shown at the bottom of this page is the only one ever photographed over North America.  It was successfully photographed by both Roofus and Snoopy).

The above Halo ML occurred during an intense electrical storm and is probably the most unusual ever photographed by my monitoring stations.   Rio Grande Electric power was off line at this time because of an intense electrical storm.  A detailed Roofus-Snoopy triangulation study of this event has shown the ML was located 8.32 statue miles from Roofus (further than originally thought).  The halo was almost a mile across (5215 ft) at ground level.  The right edge of the halo is closer to Roofus (7.78 miles) and the left edge is further away (8.62 miles) resulting in a halo width of 2552 ft as viewed from Roofus.  Height of the halo is now estimated to have been 2452 feet.  This halo ML lasted about 8 minutes.  

Approximately half an hour after the above halo event a second intense ML appeared in the same general direction but 15 miles from Roofus.  This second large ML was possibly the most intense ever observed.  The picture below shows this ML lighting up the overhead cloud bank.  It lasted approximately three hours.

This ML was so intense that it attracted attention of three military aircraft that came out to take a look.  They arrived after the ML had gone out but swooped down over where it had been located and were photographed by both Roofus and Snoopy.  Below is a sample sequence of a couple of the aircraft diving down to fly over the location where the above ML had been located.

More of the related storm is shown below:

Lightning and ML !

ML plus Lightning overhead

A classic sprite from five nights later.

And another on May 13th.

Typical Meteor.  Meteors are frequent.

This rare photograph is of a giant jet located over northern Mexico approximately south of Del Rio, Texas on May 12, 2005.  To our surprise this turned out to be the only time a giant jet has ever been photographed over the North American continent.  It was located further north of the equator than any previously observed.

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