Chinese lantern or UFO?

by GARETH BUTTERFIELD

Has ashbourne been visited by beings from another planet? Experts don't seem to think so.

This bizarre orange “fireball” stunned campers at Callow Top on Saturday as they admired the star constellations on display during a clear night.

The group of family and friends watched in awe as the bright orange glow appeared to move around the sky for around four to five minutes, getting smaller and smaller before eventually disappearing.

Tim Pickering, from Burton, was camping in a group of eight people at the Sandybrook tourist hotspot when one of the group spotted the strange orange glow.

He said: “It was absolutely bizarre, it was like a massive bonfire in the sky. None of us had ever seen anything like this before.” Tim sent pictures of the glow to astronomy experts Astronomy Ireland, who analysed the pictures, listened to Tim’s story and quickly came up with a rational explanation.

Astronomer Conor Farrell said: “Judging by the photographs, which appear to show an orange glow in the night sky, it looks like it’s nothing more than a Chinese Lantern. Perhaps let off at a nearby party.

“They’re like little hot air balloons, made of paper and powered by a candle.

“They are very light, which would explain why it was moving around, and they burn for several minutes before going out. We get a lot of sightings of these in Ashbourne at the moment.” Chinese lanterns are widely available for parties and cost just a few pounds. Their internal candle heats up the air inside the thin outer “balloon” and it rises to up to 2,000m before floating back down.

Ashbourne’s last mass UFO sighting, on Ash Wednesday in 2004, was also an orange glow reported by a handful of Shrovetide followers.

A few years ago an orange glow was spotted above Ashbourne and describes as looking like a “big Jaffa Orange” in the sky.

In the 1980s and 1990s Ashbourne was a hotbed of UFO sightings, with so many being reported each week at one stage the News Telegraph devoted a column to becoming a regular “UFO” file, listing the latest reports.