Mystery surrounds Australia's Min Min Lights

[UM-Bot]

Strange balls of light have puzzled visitors and locals alike in Western Queensland for over a century.

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/301383/mystery-surrounds-australias-min-min-lights

[highdesert50]

First impression is that of the Hessdalen lights of Norway. Perhaps Australia also has a naturally occurring battery.

[kartikg]

A decent telescope can help to solve the mystery. Someone who is near the location can arrange it by contacting local astronomy club.

[AcousticAsylum]

Sounds similar to the Paulding Light, we have up here in Michigan.
Cool story nonetheless, hope it remains a mystery.

[stereologist]

I like the idea that there could be an atmospheric effect involved. I am surprised that people thought they could tell the distance to the light across a dark expanse.

[MissJatti]

Any proof of evidence of this so called minmin lights.

Checked google and no photos or videos, must be peoples hallucinations 

Edited December 6, 2016 by MissJatti

[Calibeliever]

3 hours ago, AcousticAsylum said:

Sounds similar to the Paulding Light, we have up here in Michigan.
Cool story nonetheless, hope it remains a mystery.

Funny, the same thing came to mind. I had just stumbled across this a few weeks ago.

http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2010/october/just-time-for-halloween-michigan-tech-students-solve-mystery-paulding-light.html

[Parsec]

3 hours ago, Calibeliever said:

Funny, the same thing came to mind. I had just stumbled across this a few weeks ago.

http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2010/october/just-time-for-halloween-michigan-tech-students-solve-mystery-paulding-light.html

That's a very good example of the scientific method in play! 

[Parsec]

4 hours ago, MissJatti said:

Any proof of evidence of this so called minmin lights.

Checked google and no photos or videos, must be peoples hallucinations 

Although I tend to lean towards the Fata Morgana explanation, in all fairness have you ever tried to take a picture or a video on a distant, dim light in a pitch black environment with your mobile? 

If you have time/chance, try with the moon, that's bright a relatively big, and see which are the results. As stereologist can explain you way better than me, they are not so good. 

[back to earth]

10 hours ago, MissJatti said:

Any proof of evidence of this so called minmin lights.

Checked google and no photos or videos, must be peoples hallucinations 

Naw !   They been around for a century or so ... but the explanation , only been around about 40 years .

..... thats our MBot  !      

[back to earth]

PS  Miss Jatti  ....  it was the way you wrote it in the search box ;

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Min_light

[Habitat]

I have been in that area, I was on a dirt road late at night and saw what I thought was the lights of a car approaching in the distance, but it never arrived, and there were no roads branching off. I am not claiming it as a Min-Min ! I spoke to an old guy who had spent most of his life in the area, who claimed to have seen it many times, from what I recall of the conversation, he said the light was quite dull, something like a kerosene lantern luminosity, and he tended to the theory it was a bird of some kind.

[back to earth]

....  ?    A bird with a kerosene lantern   ?  

[Habitat]

3 minutes ago, back to earth said:

....  ?    A bird with a kerosene lantern   ?  

This was a long time ago, mid 1970's, Boulia area, the fella I spoke to was around 70 I'd say, possibly late 60's. He did not make a big deal of the Min-Min light, very matter of fact, but I do recall him insisting the light was not bright, and resembled that of a hurricane lamp in intensity. and he said he had seen it many times. Could be some kind of bioluminescence. Anyone who has been at sea at night, is likely to have seen wonders of bioluminescence that are hard to believe are not artificial light.

[stereologist]

Chrlzs is the one to contact about taking photos in dim light situations.

[back to earth]

6 minutes ago, Habitat said:

This was a long time ago, mid 1970's, Boulia area, the fella I spoke to was around 70 I'd say, possibly late 60's. He did not make a big deal of the Min-Min light, very matter of fact, but I do recall him insisting the light was not bright, and resembled that of a hurricane lamp in intensity. and he said he had seen it many times. Could be some kind of bioluminescence. Anyone who has been at sea at night, is likely to have seen wonders of bioluminescence that are hard to believe are not artificial light.

'Ghost dolphins'  !   Abso efen loutely  a m  a z i n g  !

 

 

 

 

[back to earth]

9 minutes ago, stereologist said:

Chrlzs is the one to contact about taking photos in dim light situations.

 

 

        We wondered who that was !   

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Habitat]

7 minutes ago, back to earth said:

'Ghost dolphins'  !   Abso efen loutely  a m  a z i n g  !

 

 

 

 

That of course is bioluminescent plankton "lighting  up" when disturbed by the dolphin's passage through the water, it causes me to wonder whether hydrodynamicists could use this phenomenon to better study water flow around objects like boat's hulls, etc.

[Calibeliever]

They tried with dolphins a while back but it proved to be tough to capture the right circumstances:

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/shedding-light-on-dolphins

The relevant bit: " By recording the ghostly, blue-green bioluminescent halo around the moving dolphins, Latz and Rohr were able to examine the flow of water over the creatures as they coasted beneath the camera. The study revealed that the hydrodynamic boundary layer is typically quite thin up front and that, contrary to expectations based on simple fluid mechanics, the flow does not separate from the body of the animal along its flank. "

Interesting stuff

[back to earth]

I would love to see this in person 

 

 

[ChrLzs]

On 12/7/2016 at 6:31 AM, Parsec said:

Although I tend to lean towards the Fata Morgana explanation, in all fairness have you ever tried to take a picture or a video on a distant, dim light in a pitch black environment with your mobile? 

If you have time/chance, try with the moon, that's bright a relatively big, and see which are the results. As stereologist can explain you way better than me, they are not so good. 

It's true that phones in cameras are generally not all that good in dim light - they are getting better, but you need to spend a lot to get a half decent one..  There is no substitute for a large sensor and a large lens, so that it has a chance to gather lots of photons.

Moon images are a different problem..  Even though it's quite a bit bigger than a star (or Min Min light), it's still quite small in terms of how much of the scene it occupies, and as the rest of the scene is probably very dark, the camera adjust for that, resulting in the Moon being complete overexposed - it blooms out to a white featureless blob.  The correct exposure for the Moon is more like a normal daylight exposure - some cameras allow you to override the exposure so you could do better..

If you are stuck with a camera phone and want to record a dim scene, then you should try:

1. Keep the camera as still as possible - a car roof, a fence post, power pole.. jam the camera hard against it..

2. Try to include background - while you are probably tempted to zoom in, this may not be the best thing to do...when the camera is zoomed in, it collects even less of those photons.  And see 3.

3. Don't use 'digital' zoom - check the manual and turn it off, or if it always does digital zoom (ie it does not have real optical zoom) then don't zoom at all.  Digital zoom is effectively worse than useless as it creates false detail - that might be ok on someone's face, but it's NOT ok for analysis.

4. Experiment in advance - try out the different modes and settings your camera may offer - some may work better at night than others (and it won't necessarily be the 'Night' mode that is best!  And if your camera has trouble autofocusing at night and keeps racking back and forth making the stars/streetlights big then small, over and over... well, you may as well not use that camera for this purpose unless in one of the modes (eg Landscape) it sets focus to infinity (not many do, sadly)..  Read your manual....

 

If in doubt about a particular camera's capabilities, or what to buy if you want something a bit more serious, just ask..

 

[docyabut2]

Quote

There are a lot of organism's that light the earth and the water.

 

[Habitat]

On 12/8/2016 at 0:00 AM, Calibeliever said:

They tried with dolphins a while back but it proved to be tough to capture the right circumstances:

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/shedding-light-on-dolphins

The relevant bit: " By recording the ghostly, blue-green bioluminescent halo around the moving dolphins, Latz and Rohr were able to examine the flow of water over the creatures as they coasted beneath the camera. The study revealed that the hydrodynamic boundary layer is typically quite thin up front and that, contrary to expectations based on simple fluid mechanics, the flow does not separate from the body of the animal along its flank. "

Interesting stuff

It has long been known that fish and marine mammals are far more efficient in lessening the retarding frictional drag, than man-made structures like boats can. 

[back to earth]

Really ?   

 

[Habitat]

6 minutes ago, back to earth said:

Really ?   

 

 

Very much so. Man-made objects are nowhere near as 'slippery" through the water, and I am relatively well informed on this subject.