- [Narrator] Have you ever
looked out your window on a dark clear night and
noticed something strange, like a spiral of lights
slowly engulfing the dark or a train of stars
creeping across the sky. Sometimes the things we see look so odd, we think we must have imagined them. But even people who manage to capture things like this on camera, find they can't be easily explained. With that, let's dive into the rabbit hole of unsettling sky
phenomena caught on camera that are hard, but hopefully
not impossible to explain. (images whooshing) The strange spiral. On December 9th, 2009 at 6:45 a.m, Norway sky lit up, not with a sunrise, but with an inexplicably,
huge swirling spiral. It gradually got bigger and bigger growing alarmingly in size with an ominous blue tail of
light streaming behind it. But just 10 minutes later, it vanished. It sounded too weird to be real, but multiple people caught
the phenomena on camera and footage of this strange spiral made it onto news broadcast
all around the world. It had lasted two long to be a meteor and there were too many images of it from multiple angles for it to be a hoax. Some suggested it was a failed experiment designed to weaponize the weather. And it didn't take long
for a few eccentric people to claim it was aliens
welcoming in Obama's presidency. Well disappointingly, it wasn't aliens. You can take your tin hats off now. The next day Russia's Defense Military disclosed that it had test launched a Bulava of ballistic missile
from a nearby submarine. A nozzle on the missile's
third stage engine was damaged causing the exhaust to jet out sideways, spinning the missile
round in a spiral pattern. Simulations were made up like this one to see if this explanation was plausible and thankfully it was. Actually, thankfully
might be the wrong word. Yeah, learning this was a big
ballistic missile test gone wrong doesn't feel that reassuring. Out of nowhere. In the early morning hours
of February 7th, 2022, the skies over Cuauhtemoc City in the Mexican state of
Chihuahua were completely clear. It was another perfectly peaceful day when all of a sudden this happened. (gentle playful music) Without any warning, a flock made up of thousands
of yellow headed black birds dropped out of the sky and
plunged straight into the ground. It was like some sort
of satanic microburst. Many perished on impact, but the vast majority of the flight gathered themselves up and flew away. The incident stunned local residents and left many of them
scratching their heads. What could cause an entire flock of birds to just fall out of the sky. Some speculated the flock may
have encountered a power line and were electrocuted while others blamed the
high level of pollution. But then the expert stepped
in and they explained it was likely down to
the flock being chased by a predatory bird. By hounding the flock and
forcing them to fly low, it could have disoriented them and forced the flock to crash, but that's just the leading theory. Maybe something else drove
these birds into the ground. Got any ideas? Let me know what you think
down in the comments. Starlight express. Star gazing is one of my favorite pastimes and there's nothing like legging out on a warm summer's night
without a cloud in the sky taking in nature's light show. If you're lucky, you might
even spot a shooting star, but if you're really lucky, you might spot something that
almost defies explanation like this. (lighthearted music) I'm no astrophysicist, but even I know that stars
should be stationary dots. They're not supposed to move
like trains through the sky. This was spotted back in
May, 2021 over Washington, but a few months earlier over in Brazil, Aldo Machado spotted this same phenomena. Only this time, it seemed
a little closer to earth. (lighthearted music) And way back in 2020, Ian Taylor in the UK spotted
the exact same thing. (dramatic music) Despite what it looks like, this isn't an alien species
trying to get in touch with us using an interstellar Conga line. It turns out these are Starling satellites owned and operated by SpaceX designed to provide
internet access coverage to most of earth. By January, 2022, SpaceX had launched more than
1,900 of these satellites into space, coordinated to
move in these train like lines while the earth spins below them, they catch the light from the horizon and reflect back to earth
like a series of tiny moons. I mean, I know some companies
say that the sky's the limit, but this is ridiculous. You know what isn't ridiculous though? Hit on those like and
subscribe buttons down below. With just two little clicks, you'll be the first to know
when I upload brand new content, including a part two to this topic if it gets enough likes. All done? Great. Now, this next one might be my favorite. Your friendly neighborhood black hole. Back in 2019, astronomers released the world's first
photograph of a black hole. A point in space where the
force of gravity is so strong that even light can't escape it. Considering the speed of light is roughly 186,000 miles per second. That's one powerful hole. For years, complex theories
gave us detailed ideas of what this would look like up close, but the sheer scale of this thing is still hard to appreciate. At least it was until footage and images of one of these big black holes hovering over a small Russian town began surfacing on the web back in 2015. It looks like our sun if our sun was a weirdly ominous donut made of imminent death. Luckily this was just a simulation created by the Rocksmith space agency. But if a black hole was
that close to earth, what would happen? Well, let's assume the closest black
hole to our solar system, the one previously photographed known as A0620-00 suddenly appeared in our sky. This thing has a mass that's
more than six and a half times that of our sun, but it's
only about 45 miles across meaning it's roughly the
same size as a large city that weighs more than 13.2 octillion tons. Wow, that's a lot of zeros. So the gravity well of
this thing is so strong that if it appeared less than
500,000 miles from earth, a little over double the
distance to the moon, it literally ripped the earth apart. We'd all be gradually
destroyed by something that in the Night sky would
barely look like a dot. So if it appeared this
large in the sky, one day, we'd all be dead in a matter of moments. With that said, I'll
take our regular old sun over this deadly donut any day. Red sprites, lightning storms are incredible
to watch from a distance, but sometimes they bring more than bolts of bright, white electricity with them. Keep watching. (lighthearted music) Did you see that? Let's slow it down a touch, right there, those weird red streaks, but this isn't a glitch
in this guy's camera. Back in 2015, NASA captured an image of a
similar red flash from space hovering directly above a storm. These flashes aren't
lightning that's for sure. So what are they? It turns out these are
called 'Red Sprites'. They may look like they're on
the same level as the storm, but they're flashes that
occur in the Mesosphere. Some 150,000 feet above the storm itself. While they look quite small on camera, the sprites can actually
reach some 30 miles across, but what exactly are they? Well the short answer is,
scientists don't know for sure. What they do know is that red sprites are often triggered by a strong,
positive bolt of lightning near the ground. Now, most cloud to ground lightning has a negative electric charge, but kind of obviously positive lightning has a positive charge. It only makes up less
than 5% of all lightning, but it's up to 10 times stronger
than negative lightning. It's so strong that it breaks apart atmospheric molecules into ions, and it's believed these ions smashing into molecules in the air is what creates these sprites
and gives them their color. But this is just a theory. Personally, I like to think
the lightning strengths are just briefly revealing a few massive invisible
jellyfish in the sky, all hail our glorious red jelly overlords. Maybe I've been watching
too many sci-fi movies. (page whooshing) Red lightning. Okay. We've just covered red sprites. So what's red lightning? This image cropped up on the
internet several years ago with multiple people claiming it was a crazy red lightning storm. Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it look more
like the Neo-Tokyo explosion from Akira? The real nerds know
what I'm talking about. Back to reality though and
despite the internet claims, this is not a red lightning storm. It's not even in the sky. Sure, it looks like a
big red ball of lightning on the horizon but if you follow that supposed horizon around, you'll see this is actually a crater. That's right. This is
volcanic lava, not lightning. While the two couldn't be more different volcanoes and lightning do have a unique and mesmerizing relationship. When a volcano erupts, fragments of volcanic ash and ice collide at speed in the air generating static electricity
within the volcanic plume. This creates what's known
as a dirty thunderstorm like regular volcanic explosions weren't terrifying enough already. (page whooshing) Under the sea sky. Clouds are those fluffy
sometimes wispy white things floating high up in the sky. Well, imagine looking up
one day and seeing this. (gentle music) Whoa, it's like being
underneath a wave in the ocean, but this footage wasn't
shot under the sea. It's actually a time lapse of the clouds covering Augusta, Georgia back in 2015. At the time, there was no name for
this incredible phenomenon because it had been witnessed so rarely. But in 2017, the world
meteorological organization finally gave the great rolling
cloud wave an official name, Undulatus Asperitas. This made it the first new cloud formation added to the official Cloud
Atlas in more than 60 years. But what makes those
clouds wave like this? While the clouds themselves
tend to be low lying and roll with a specific
pattern of weather fronts that create undulating
waves in the atmosphere. Depending on how thick the cloud is, the light can make the cloud
waves look incredibly oceanic. Suddenly, my massive
floating jellyfish theory doesn't sound so mad. (page whooshing) A colorful sky. Just about, everyone's seen a rainbow at some point in their life. These pretty arcs of
color are fairly common forming in the sky when
sunlight is refracted through raindrops,
splitting white light out into its many different wavelengths. You know what's less common though, seeing a rainbow that fills the entire sky or even seeing a cloud
stained in rainbow colors. Looks like something
made in Photoshop, right? Well, incredibly, these are all real. They're commonly called fire rainbows. Although technically they have nothing to do
with fires or rainbows. So what the heck are they? A glitch in the matrix? A sign from some LGBQIA+ friendly aliens. Actually these are called
circumhorizontal arcs and they belong to the ice
halo phenomenon family. Ice halos are rings and arcs of light that appear in the sky when sunlight shines through
ice crystals in the air. Circumhorizontal arcs form
at the top of these halos, when hexagonal shaped ice
crystals drift down from the sky, like leaves from a tree. When the light passes through
faces of the ice crystals that are 60 degrees to one another, the light is refracted out into its rainbow light components. Depending on the density of
these ice crystal clouds, the colors can appear as
horizontal rainbow splashes in the sky, but they can also form entire arcs that look like reverse rainbows. Now that sounds like a
pretty decent explanation, but then how do you explain
something like this? There's no rainbow, there's
no patch of iridescent sky. How does that work? Despite looking like an
oil spill in the sky, these are an all natural phenomenon known as polar stratosphere clouds. Now normally clouds form from condensation in the troposphere, some 49,000 feet above our heads. But as their name suggests polar stratosphere clouds
form in the stratosphere. The second layer of the Earth's atmosphere that stretches up to
196,000 feet above us. Unlike the troposphere, which contains 99% of the total mass of all water vapor on earth, the stratosphere is
very dry and very cold. Water vapor that manages
to reach up to this level, freezes to a frost, a negative
117 degrees Fahrenheit. Depending on what state
the water freezes to be it ice or a super cold solution. The resulting clouds form
these iridescent veils by reflecting sunlight from
below the horizon, pretty. Now considering all the different ways light can be spectacularly
refracted through the atmosphere that might not be too hard to think an image like this is real. Yeah, that's a tornado, apparently sucking up all
the colors of the rainbow like mother nature's own vacuum cleaner. As cool as it looks though,
this is 100% fake, I'm afraid. Rainbows occur when light is refracted through millions of water droplets, which then hits our eyes
at a very precise angle, but tornadoes can't suck up light. They're not that powerful. So this is likely just acute
composite of two images, but rainbows and tornadoes who are in this case, a water spout can occur in the same
place at the same time. And I'd argue that that's
actually way more impressive. (page whooshing) Really raptured? According to some Christians, humanity will reach an end time where believers will
rise up into the clouds to meet their Lord in an
event known as the rapture. It hasn't happened yet
as far as we are aware, but there seems to be an assumption that those who are raptured will be drafted up in the
glorious trails of light. They're kinda like this, is
it too late for me to repent? Fortunately, no, this isn't the rapture, nor is it the greatest ludrop the gaming world has ever seen. These are light pillars and
astonishingly pretty phenomena that's even visible to
the naked eye in the dark. But if it's not God
throwing a few spotlights on a bunch of flying Christians,
then what's making them? When temperatures drop below freezing specifically between 14 degrees to negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit, millions of hexagonal
plate-shaped ice crystals can start to form, the same
ones that form fire rainbows. But when they form close to the ground light from things like
houses and street lights can reflect off them,
tunneling the light upwards into these impressively
illuminated pillars. I guess I'm free to live a
life of sin for a bit longer before I need to worry about repenting. (page whooshing) They're watching. Avid stargazers will know how
entrancing the moon can be. Many can stare at it through binoculars or telescopes for hours. But when Andrey Smetanin
decided to get a closer look at the moon surface using his new camera, he was shocked to
discover he wasn't alone. (playful music) Andrey had spotted
three ominous black dots slowly moving across the sky
in roughly the same direction. According to Andrey, he estimated they must have been flying at an altitude of 310 miles. That would place them
somewhere in the Thermosphere. A layer of the Earth's atmosphere that's more than 40 times the height than regular planes fly at. So if it's not planes, could these unidentified flying
objects belong to, aliens? Sorry, sorry. I'll take the tinfoil hat off. No, it's not aliens. It's most likely a series of satellites. A few of the more than 12,470 that have ever been launched into space. Well, only 5,200 of these satellites are currently functioning, it's still more than likely
that those three dots are just active satellites. But mark my words, one
day it will be aliens. So I'm keeping my tinhat on for now. (page whooshing) Cloud creature. Back in 2021, while most of us were trying not to go mad with
boredom during lockdown, one person looked out their window and genuinely thought
they were going insane. On March 15th, a Facebook user
decided to livestream a storm not because they were bored, but because they thought they
could see something in it, something big. Sure enough on the live stream, it looked like there was
something floating in the air, hidden behind the clouds. It's too bright shining eyes even looked right down
the barrel of the camera at one point. The stream was viewed
more than 75,000 times in the space of a few hours and worried comments
began to flood the chat. People were genuinely convinced, some sort of unseen shadow Lord was haunting the skies above them. Like lockdown couldn't get any worse, but as you probably guess, those people didn't have
anything to worry about. Internet detectives did some digging and discovered this supposed live stream was actually a video that originally had been uploaded back in 2018. It was created by Mclelun, a designer and programmer from Malaysia specializing in visual effects. They've been experimenting
with a few different effects and created the sequence purely as a test. So what did they use to create the monster hidden in the clouds? It was a rubber duck, suddenly this is a lot less scary unless you're really afraid of bath time. (page whooshing) Morning glory. How would you describe a typical cloud? Fluffy, white, puffy? No. So not long and too blank then in which case, what the
heck is this meant to be? (lighthearted music) That thing stretches
from horizon to horizon, like some sort of planet size sausage and incredibly, it's not
the only one of its kind. These are morning glory clouds capable of reaching more
than 620 miles across and more than one mile high. On top of that, they can travel as fast
as 65 feet per second. Damn! These tubes got somewhere to be, but how can multiple tubes form like that? Well, scientists don't
have a concrete answer even though the clouds
themselves are well understood. Moisture and temperature
play an important factor as they're spotted most
often along coastlines where there's plenty of moist air. An oncoming wave of warm air carries this moist air into
the colder troposphere, where it cools and condenses. It then falls with the
downdraft of the air flow below the condensation level before sometimes being pushed up again, creating another peak of
condensation behind the first. However, scientists aren't sure
of the exact weather systems that are needed for these
sorts of clouds to form in the first place. While they're not fully understood that doesn't stop these clouds from being any less spectacular. (page whooshing) A sky full of bubble wrap? Considering we've seen two clouds, rainbow clouds and wave clouds. You'd think that by now we'd
have run out of weird clouds to marvel at. Well, you're wrong because
we haven't taken a look at the amazing Manmmatus cloud formation, or as I like to call
it 'A bubble wrap sky'. (light hearted) The way they bulge like that just makes me wanna
reach out and pop them. The brilliantly bizarre
pouch like protrusions form inside large Cumulonimbus clouds. The type that usually brings storms. Turbulence within these clouds sees air currents rise and fall. And it's cool sinking
air in these conditions that drops down to form
these strange sagging pouches in the condensate. Depending on the air currents though, the patterns these pouches form can appear entirely random
or disturbingly linear, but no matter their shape, they all look particularly
spectacular during a sunset. (gentle upbeat music) (page whooshing) Don't look up as. I was scouring the internet trying to find weird and
unexplainable sky phenomena, a few similar images kept cropping up. They were landscape images
of countrysides and roads, but all of them had some
sort of huge giant figure looming in the background. Some of these figures,
haunted highways at night, standing over them like
menacing guardians. Others were just single appendages, sneaking down from the clouded sky, hiding the true size of
whatever it belong to. At first, I just assumed
these were all fake, but then I found one I recognized. This is Laguna peak in
Ventura county, California, but what the heck is that? I mean, I really want to say this is fake, but seeing something so ominous staring down at somewhere I
know made me feel unsettled to say the least. After a bit of more digging, I found out that all of these are the works of Trevor Henderson. He's the Canadian horror artist behind a whole host of iconic
crypted internet creatures, such as Siren Head and Bridge Worm. So just to confirm, none
of these giants are real. Whew! still creepy as hell, but at least now I stand a
chance of sleeping tonight or at least I thought I
would until I saw this. Okay, don't panic. There are three very
logical possibilities here that can explain this. One, someone has drawn the
abdomen and legs of a spider onto this photo of a beachside city to make it look super huge. Two, a spider climbed
onto the front of a camera while someone was taking a photo. So it's up close body's out of focus, making its back end look
blurry, but also huge or three, earth is now
controlled by giant spiders and we must all submit to
our new Arachnid overloads. Which of these sky phenomena did you find the most unsettling? And which did you think was kind of cool? Let me know down on the comments below and thanks for watching. (lighthearted music)
