Bizarre footage has emerged online showing the moment that a Siberian man captured on camera a mysterious luminous sphere hovering in the sky over a field near Novosibirsk. The mysterious object glided slowly in the air across a field just above the horizon before passing out of sight into nearby woods.
Although Roman Tregubov, a graduate of Novosibirsk State Technical University in Siberia, declared that the huge ball of white light was a rare ball lightning phenomenon, some viewers challenged the suggestion, saying that it behaved unlike typical ball lightning and that it may have been a bright orb UFO exploring the Siberian terrain outside Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberian region of Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcQ9dEvg71s
The shaky one minute and six-second footage (see above), uploaded to YouTube on August 3 by The Siberian Times , was captured on July 18, at about 14:41 p.m. local time, according to Roman Tregubov .
It shows a mysterious luminous sphere hovering in the air just visible above the horizon. Then it began moving slowly across the field until it disappeared into a wooded area, according to The Siberian Times .
“The video is very shaky because there was a high fence where it was filmed,” the video description reads, “so the guy who did the video had to stand on a brick and held a phone as high as possible to ‘catch’ the fireball.”
“What is that?” a female voice asks Tregubov as he filmed with his phone camera.
“Fireball lightning,” answers Tregubov, still filming.
“It’s moving away,” Tregubov comments as the luminous sphere moves away from the witnesses. It glides over a field and disappears behind trees.
“It is a fireball lightning… first time I have seen one. It’s moving away… lost it. Where is it? There… I wonder if it’ll blow off soon…”
“[It] is very rare, yet it can appear anywhere,” Tregubov told The Siberian Times . “The physics of fireball lightening isn’t clearly explained yet, but either way I was astonished to see a fireball lightening of such size — and not just that, but to catch the whole process from the beginning when it appeared until the end.”
Many viewers complained that the video was filmed in portrait (vertical position) rather than in landscape (horizontal position). Others complained it was shaky.
The complaints forced a woman, who identified herself as Tregubov’s daughter (Jenny T.), to offer an apology.
“Everyone is commenting on my dad’s video taking skills.. I’m terribly sorry he chose to look at the actual event instead of at the camera.”
A few viewers challenged Tregubov’s explanation that the mysterious luminous orb was ball lightning, saying it was obviously an intelligently controlled bright orb UFO exploring the Siberian terrain.
“Ball lightning? Tell me how it is able to fly across the sky like that!”
Some argued that ball lighting phenomenon is usually associated with thunderstorms but it did not appear there was a thunderstorm at the time the witness filmed the orb. Others argued that the bright orb was much larger than normal ball lightning.
Most ball lighting range from pea-size to a few meters across. But the bright luminous sphere shown in the video appeared to be a massive orb, several meters across, based on a reasonable estimate of the distance from the fence.
Yet other commenters noted that most ball lightning dissipate very quickly, usually explosively. But the orb shown in the video was long-lived. It glided slowly across the large field and until it passed out of sight it remained intact.
However, some viewers agreed with Tregubov that it was ball lightning.
“It’s just ball lightning,” a viewer said. “I’ve seen a few of those in the neighboring Altai region in the 90s.”
But the viewer agreed that ball lightning tends to dissipate quickly,unlike the mysterious object shown in the video.
“They always seem to dissipate relatively quickly,” he said.
Ball lightning phenomenon is not well understood by science but it is considered an electrical phenomenon often associated with thunderstorms. It usually appears briefly as a small luminous spherical object a few inches or meters across, but lasts longer than the typical lightning flash.
Ball lightings often disintegrate by exploding.
[Image via Shutterstock]