Any Ideas? Narrow Beam of Light right across the Sky.

[Arc]

Hello everyone. My family and I live in Central Queensland and about a week ago while we were stargazing and noticed a narrow beam of light that stretched across the whole sky from south to north. I tried to get a picture of it but failed so let me explain what we saw.

It was pretty high and the beam was straight, narrow, white in colour and stationary. My wife thought a plane was coming and it was a huge spot light on the nose of the plane. But no plane arrived. Then we really noticed how long it was. It looked like it may have been from horizon to horizon though we could not see the horizons from our backyard. It's hard to judge how high it was but let's say about normal cloud level height maybe 5000ft.

We left it for twenty minutes and when we checked again the beam was still there but had moved from overhead to about a kilometre to the east. It was at the same height and still stationary. That made me wonder if we were moving away from it via the rotation of the Earth.
Could we have been lucky enough to see a pulsar cutting through our atmosphere? Is that even possible?

Cheers :)

[bojan]

Somebody was playing with high-power laser...
Nothing to do with pulsars, definitely!

[koputai]

Probably much higher than 5000ft, 5000ft is pretty low.

It was possibly the contrail from an airliner that had passed over, and the contrail was being lit by earth or sky glow.

Which town was it over?

Cheers,
Jason.

[LewisM]

I vote contrail. It would be probably 20,000 ft PLUS, and if the wind is negigable at the flight level, they can remain intact and relatively stationary for a LONG time. And typically out over central QLD the routes are VERY straight with few turning points. Contrails are quite easy to see in DARK nights with little light pollution.

[Arc]

It was over the little town of Marian.

Thanks for the reply guys. I like the contrail idea but it doesn't feel right for two reasons.

When it moved across I had a better sense of its height and I don't guess it was at a commercial jet altitude. I see the contrails for the jets coming back from Cains in the afternoons on the drive home from work and those contrails are very high indeed.

But the main reason I don't think it was a contrail is because it was just too straight. It was light beam straight. I mean it looked like a beam of light with two distinct dead straight edges.

This is the closest picture of a light beam that I have been able to find on the web. It looked quite similar to the left beam in this photo. Same colour, same transparency and as straight with defined edges. Horizontal not vertical.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/arcarc/Beam_zps2031ddf2.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/arcarc/media/Beam_zps2031ddf2.jpg.html)

Just reading that back it's sounds a little nuts now. :screwy:

[bojan]

Ah.. one of those things from astro horror dreams - reflectors that light up the sky for advertising some stupid event (a opening of the hotel or some new shopping centre.. )

[Arc]

You may be right Bojan though that would be quite unusual for this area. Also being horizontal and seemingly stationary is still puzzling for the purpose of advertising.

I might just forget about it.

[koputai]

"I might just forget about it."

That's what the aliens want you to do. They probably planted the seed of
doubt in your brain via a small, almost undetectable incision, hidden in the
fold behind your ear. Check your cows. Are they pregnant? I bet they won't
be giving normal milk.........

[AstralTraveller]

A pub near me sometimes has a spot light shining into the sky, apparently in case someone doesn't know where The North Gong is :rolleyes:. I think what I see matches your description well enough - straight, narrow, white. They seem to have the angle pretty low so the beam looks horizontal and, with all due respect, I think judging the distance of something at night whos size you don't know is very difficult, especially if it isn't moving. They tend to move it about a bit but sometimes it sits still for a while. I suppose it depends on whether there is an operator and how energetic they are. You could just set it up and go and do other things.

This is at a pretty big city pub but you'll have decide whether this sounds plausible in Marian and whether the geometry fits.

BTW back in the 80's the Stones were doing an outdoor gig in Sydney and the light show could be seen overhead from Mt Keira at the back of Wollongong. Quite faint but still obvious against darkish skies.

[Arc]

@ koputai - Heh, yer I'll check tonight for those signs. ;)

@AstralTraveller - Your right, it's probably someone with a huge spot light for some reason. The thing is though I've lived in this valley my whole life. The distance following the beam back south would not hit the range for a least 20km. And the range isn't very high.
I just can't imagine how anyone in the valley is at any kind of height with a massive light.

It could also have been higher or lower than I though. But I did see it from two different angles and I was able to see the width of the beam overhead v.s. the width in the distance relative to the ground.

It's probably a very simple answer. Knowing the area I just can't put it together though.