The Brown Mountain Lights: BML Cam1 Jonas Ridge Camera for December 2014

The Brown Mountain Lights Research Team's BML Cam1 sits atop a house on Jonas Ridge and overlooks Brown Mountain 7 miles to the east. It has been running intermittedntly since February 2013 and has recorded over 4,000 hours of night-time images.

Dr. Dan Caton, Professor and Director of Observatories, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Appalachian State University (Boone, NC) installed and operates the camera as part of an on-going research project. Dr. Caton also installed and operates another research camera (BML Cam2) located at the southern end of Linville Gorge. The images from both cameras are compiled into nightly videos and posted on YouTube---just search "Brown Mountain Lights Camera 1" (or Camera 2) for the individual nightly videos. Both cameras are modified digital meteor-hunting cameras with low-light sensitive CCD sensors.

To date, numerous lights have been recorded by Cam1, including: town/city/rural lights in the valleys beyond Brown Mountain, fireworks, communication tower lights, airplanes and helicopters, highway-vehicle lights, off-highway-vehicle lights, stadium lights, back-country user lights, and brush/forest fires. Natural lights captured by the camera include stars, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, meteors, lightning and fireflies. Disappointingly, Cam1 has yet to record any support for mysterious or unknown lights in the Brown Mountain area.

BML Cam1 recorded 336 hours of nocturnal observation time on 29 seperate nights during December 2014, resulting in 38,569 individual 30-second time-exposure images. This brings the totals over the past 23 months since start up in Feb 2013 to 4,002 hours of nocturnal observation time on 440 seperate nights resulting in 437,273 individual time-exposure images. Each of these images has been examined in detail by members of our research team.

No abnormal, unusual or unexplained nocturnal lights were recorded by BML Cam1 during December 2014. However, the usual distant city/town/rural lights, airplane lights, and Lenoir's Christmas Star atop Hibriten Mtn were visible this month. In addition staged hiker lights atop Brown Mountain were visible on Dec 11, while a probable hunter's camp was visible on Dec 4, MedEvac helicopters were visible on Dec 13 & 18, and probable ATV lights were visible on Dec 31. During the staged hiker light test on Dec 11, an airplane was seen flying very low over Brown Mountain and it's lights were captured by BML Cam1.

The following images are selected to show some significant features visible during December 2014. Note that the camera position does not change during this sequence of images. Blurry or out-of-focus distant lights are caused by: 1) over-saturation of the super-sensitive CCD sensor; 2) movemnt of the lights; &/or 3) rising heat currents that distort the incoming light waves during the time exposures. Bright lights with light rays extending above & below are also due to the CCD sensor.