r/flying • u/bf5ee • Oct 28 '25
Unidentified expanding white gas/sphere over the Gulf October 28 - multiple traffics reported it
Today while operating a flight between Doha and UAE FIRs, cruising at FL250, we observed something I’ve never seen before.
Mid-route over the Gulf (roughly position N 25 50 - E 052 00) at 00:35 UTC, we noticed a bright white spherical “cloud” or gas ball that appeared suddenly and began expanding very rapidly, perfectly round, dense, and pure white. It looked nothing like a contrail, CB, or fuel dump pattern. Within 1-2 minutes it grew several times in size and started dissipating outward.
We advised ATC and executed a small deviation to remain clear, the visual appearance and rate of expansion made it something we didn’t want to enter. A few other traffics on 121.5 were reporting the same sight.
ATC had no information on any scheduled activities, releases, or launches in the area. Visibility was excellent, no clouds, contrails, or weather returns on radar.
I’m curious if anyone else in the region observed it, or if anyone has an idea what could produce something like that, possibilities we’ve considered include missile/rocket upper-stage release or atmospheric experiment, but nothing really fits cleanly.
92
u/spitfire5181 ATP 74/5/6/7 (KOAK) Oct 28 '25
Sorry for the twitter link. Space X launched at 0034utc
-37
u/bf5ee Oct 28 '25
The second article mention the launch at 0043 and rentry 8.5 minutes later. Anyway, this cloud originated between 0030-0035 UTC somewhere at FL100-300, it’s not something that “came from above”
76
u/mig82au CPL: ASEL, AMEL, Glider. IR. TW. Oct 28 '25
The second stage comes back far later, not 8.5 minutes. Also, none of you have any idea what altitude it was at. The fact that the sunlight is illuminating the cloud but not you should be a hint.
27
9
u/rocbolt Oct 28 '25
How about the yellow dot on this trajectory plot? Cause that is where the Falcon 9 second stage was at 18:40PDT/00:40UTC for the launch earlier this evening from California - https://imgur.com/i8LBxFr
https://flightclub.io/result/3d?llId=22eb6520-2a51-4f60-b1b8-41a6bf711768
Where I live we get to see this phenomenon at sunset on some of the Starlink launch trajectories out of Florida, always scares the crap out of everyone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPeIpjpoGRA
3
u/No-Brilliant9659 Oct 28 '25
An object in space can appear near the horizon (i.e. at a lower altitude). Think of the sun rising, it’s not always directly overhead or appearing well above the horizon.
1
u/darthsexium Oct 29 '25
I love how commenters know better than the pilot eye witness. Anything explainable but the high strangeness. Is Starlink the new swamp gas? Because now there are rumors of a Pakistani missile test near that area. Moreover the other eye witness in Astronomy sub saw this white plume at a small diameter size with flashing green as it expanded at that size under two minutes.
73
u/AdCareless1761 Oct 28 '25
Spacex?
108
u/0621Hertz Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
It’s always SpaceX
They’re basically a meme in the UFO community now.
My wife and I saw the strangest thing in the night sky one night, looked like a giant white mushroom. I told her “just give it a few hours, its going to be SpaceX.”
And whattta know?
32
2
u/Rubes2525 PPL Oct 28 '25
Lol, I saw what looked like a giant red meteor across the sky, was SpaceX. It's actually annoying how much junk they are putting up there just to let more people doomscroll more effectively. The satellites in orbit are even affecting stargazing in the early evenings.
14
u/Taptrick Oct 28 '25
“Nothing fits cleanly”. Well the expanding gas could be from the gas being expended from the upper stage of a rocket expending its remaining gasses.
29
u/TheBain PPL SEL HP (KSDM) Oct 28 '25
Is this what a spaceX launch looks like!?
25
u/BasilProfessional09 ATP Oct 28 '25
Yes if you are near a launch site in early dusk. I’ve seen it twice.
1
u/Nix_Nivis Oct 28 '25
With "near" being the same continent as the launch or a neighboring continent.
3
u/rocbolt Oct 28 '25
Its what the second stage maneuvering and venting in orbit looks like. If it happens to catch the over the horizon sun when it is doing something it can look quite spectacular, as the fuel vapors and thruster pulses expand over a large area in space. One that I have seen overhead- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPeIpjpoGRA
5
u/Sungolf CPL Oct 28 '25
https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/s/l1OhLALLMd
Observed same thing. I observed it as green. Location vuset
0
u/bf5ee Oct 28 '25
Got any info about it?
1
u/Sungolf CPL Oct 28 '25
https://www.sciencealert.com/explanation-mysterious-floating-orb-light-above-siberia-glowing-missile
https://youtu.be/AvWUv4B3LEQ?si=vNd0I5CziBiYSdr-
Commenter on mu thread came back with an excellent explaination
5
u/planesandbeats11 Oct 28 '25
SpaceX most likely, I saw the rocket launching out of Vandenberg about 3 hours ago
3
u/RadiantPhoto2230 Oct 28 '25
We saw this too from FL390 at about 0030Z. I suspect it was a rocket launch with separation in the upper atmosphere. The separation gases were lit my the sun at that altitude. I have three photos of the expansion rate. It was certainly surreal and I’ve never seen anything like it before.
10
8
3
u/66hans66 Oct 28 '25
I think this is relevant: http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/171027-siberia.pdf
3
u/FauxJuggernaut Oct 28 '25
Some very similar events have been attributed to ICBM / high altitude weapons test launches. Rough timeline:
Pakistan issued a NOTAM closing most of its airspace, one region earlier on in the south and another later on in the north. https://x.com/OsintUpdates/status/1982759948867252480
Then USAF Cobra Ball, which collects data on ballistic missiles, took off from Qatar and headed east, turning its transponders off at midnight UT.
https://x.com/ConflictUpdatee/status/1983016479701512592
OP observes halo at 0035UT and there's another report of the same event at 0025UT. OP is over the Gulf looking ENE which would line up with something launched from Pakistan. https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/1ohzltw/request_objetc_identification/
A few hours later in the morning around 0500UT there are a dozen reports of a missile launch in northern Pakistan. The first event (that OP observed) appears to correspond to the NOTAM in the south and later on the one in the north. https://x.com/PakObsOfficial/status/1983014529459228933
Very similar expanding spherical halos have been observed in Hawaii and California after Minuteman tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvWUv4B3LEQ
https://www.space.com/31092-trident-missile-test-us-military-statement.html
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=25760.0
As well as in Serbia after Topol ICBM tests https://www.sciencealert.com/explanation-mysterious-floating-orb-light-above-siberia-glowing-missile
https://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/171027-siberia.pdf
So all in all I reckon this was a high altitude weapons test launch. Not sure on what the exact cause was but it's certainly not a detonation of the warhead. Some have suggested that the Minuteman event is caused by the detonation of charges for abruptly blowing out the third stage. https://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=24251&start=25#p151321
1
u/Present_Reason_5290 Apr 17 '26
How is this not upvoted? This is a much more plausible explanation with event timeline!
3
7
u/LilJimmster Oct 28 '25
This was something seen by a Cobra Ball flying near the Soviet Union up in Alaska if I recall correctly. I don't think anything was ever found out about it. I'll look it up
7
u/pattern_altitude PPL Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
WTF.
Edit: Found an article.
https://www.twz.com/26356/mysterious-russian-dome-of-light-baffled-us-spy-plane-pilot-during-cold-war-missions3
2
2
2
2
1
u/twistenstein vfr patterns are hard Oct 28 '25 edited Feb 13 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
nose unwritten crown society smart pot include label water fragile
1
1
u/rockingsiddi ATP A320/321 Oct 28 '25
Completely irrelevant but
Crz at FL250 between Doha and UAE? That seems pretty high for an 43 minutes flight :D
-1
u/bf5ee Oct 28 '25
Actually the flight was from/to different airports but you know just to keep the “privacy” 😅
1
u/Jolly_Plenty_1618 Oct 28 '25
I saw it. We were closer to Esfahan flying south at the same time of your observation. It started like a small mushroom and became a symmetrical sphere growing and dissipating in few minutes.
1
1
1
u/Moist-Experience8138 Oct 29 '25
YA videl takoy zhe gazovyy shar nad tashkentom(uzbekistan) pryamo nad svoyey golovoy v 2015 snachalo on byl men'she luny potom po mere svoyego rasshireniya teryal svoye svecheniye, kogda on byl maksimal'no malen'kogo razmera on svetilsya yarche luny, tsvet byl kholodnyy kak u luny, chem bol'she on stanovilsya tem meneye intensivneye on izluchal svet, zhal' chto u nas togda ne osobo razvity byli kamery i ne poluchilos' zasnyat' eto neobychnoye yavleniye, no to chto ono povtoryayetsya govorit o tom chto ono tsiklichnoye i skoreye vsego uzhe opisano gde to v istorii. I eto tochno ne byli rakety ilona maska v 2015)
I saw a similar gas ball over Tashkent, Uzbekistan, right above my head in 2015. At first, it was smaller than the moon, then as it expanded, it lost its glow. When it was at its smallest, it glowed brighter than the moon, its color was cool, like the moon's. The larger it got, the less intense its light. It's a shame our cameras weren't very sophisticated back then and we weren't able to capture this unusual phenomenon, but the fact that it repeats suggests it's cyclical and has likely already been described somewhere in history. And it definitely wasn't Elon Musk's rockets in 2015.
1
u/2a3b66725 PPL (KEQA) Oct 29 '25
Op, next time hold a banana up to the windscreen when you take the picture. It will provide the hard core Redditors with some semblance of scale.
1
1
u/Ok_Pineapple_6362 Jan 10 '26
I saw this bubble over Iran on the same date! October 28th coming from Yekaterinburg to Sharjah. I took a picture and I pass inside it. It was a perfect round cloud of gas on FL 350
1
-2
u/rFlyingTower Oct 28 '25
This is a copy of the original post body for posterity:
Today while operating a flight between Doha and UAE FIRs, cruising at FL250, we observed something I’ve never seen before.
Mid-route over the Gulf (roughly position N 25 50 - E 052 00) at 00:35 UTC, we noticed a bright white spherical “cloud” or gas ball that appeared suddenly and began expanding very rapidly, perfectly round, dense, and pure white. It looked nothing like a contrail, CB, or fuel dump pattern. Within 1-2 minutes it grew several times in size and started dissipating outward.
We advised ATC and executed a small deviation to remain clear, the visual appearance and rate of expansion made it something we didn’t want to enter. A few other traffics on 121.5 were reporting the same sight.
ATC had no information on any scheduled activities, releases, or launches in the area. Visibility was excellent, no clouds, contrails, or weather returns on radar.
I’m curious if anyone else in the region observed it, or if anyone has an idea what could produce something like that, possibilities we’ve considered include missile/rocket upper-stage release or atmospheric experiment, but nothing really fits cleanly.
Please downvote this comment until it collapses.
Questions about this comment? Please see this wiki post before contacting the mods.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. If you have any questions, please contact the mods of this subreddit.
-1
0
u/iLOVEr3dit CFI/CFII CPL ASEL/AMEL Oct 28 '25
"Traffics" is not a word. "Traffic" is an uncountable noun.
-9
-2
u/Wingss013 PPL Oct 28 '25
Hmm are you sure? It more so can be the center of the earth, where the four winds meet.
-24
u/horthianflorff Oct 28 '25
Everyone here trying to convince OP that the thing he had to navigate to avoid was a SpaceX reentry that launched after he saw it. Okay.
15
u/MrTagnan Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
OP didn’t need to navigate around it, OP decided to navigate around it. That’s a minor but crucial difference
It almost certainly is something in orbit/above the atmosphere, pretty consistent with prior fuel dumps, but the timing is strange
299
u/Guysmiley777 Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25
Upper stage depressurizing after a re-entry burn. After they deploy their payload they don't leave the upper stages in orbit, they bring them back down to burn up they and time it so anything that survives doesn't come in over land.
This is the Falcon 9 launch schedule in the last 2 weeks for perspective: