At approximately 10:15 PM EDT on March 17th I witnessed a strange sight. While driving into Simcoe, Ontario via Hillcrest Road, something low on the horizon caught my attention. At first I wondered if this was a planet but after I pulled the car over to the side of the road and focused harder, it became clear that this object was flashing through a whole spectrum of colours: red, blue, yellow, white one at a time at a high rate. Strange lights?
Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day and skywatchers were made aware of the forecasted Solar Storm that brought Northern Lights much further south than normal. This was not the Northern Lights.
I wasn’t able to take any video because my camera phone would not zoom in to capture the object but I did manage to zoom in using the photo feature. Today I moved the photo’s onto my laptop and zoomed in further using a video editing program. I then re-opened those photo’s and used the desharp/enhance/deinterlace feature in gimp software to attempt a better look at what I saw. I am still surprised by the results- the colours that I saw vividly and clearly did not show up on the photographs and the photographs reveal what looks like a shape-shifting object!
I’ve been so intrigued by this I decided to return to sighting location so I could take a daytime photo of the sky/horizon where I had the sighting and I used my phone to get a compass reading on the direction of where the object was.
The first series of photo’s- shown below are the camera-zoomed in series and are unenhanced by software. The second series of single photo’s are the software-zoomed in and enhanced versions of the first four photographs . I’m hoping someone can offer up ideas on what I saw by commenting below or emailing The Silo (contentproducer@thesilo.ca) *name with held by request*
Series 1
Series 2- 
Supplemental- Severe Solar storm forecast predicts Northern Lights much further South than normal http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/03/17/solar-geomagnetic-storm/24901903/
Virtual visit: Hillcrest Road, Simcoe, ON
