With drones making news in the skies over New Jersey recently, I thought I would post my own sightings of at least two drone-like objects over Saint-Laurent, Quebec. The most unusual feature of these objects to me, is their vertical contrails or streamers. All I could find online about smoke-emitting drones, were stories of air shows where different coloured smoke was emitted by the drones as they flew in formations. I found nothing about vertical smoke trails from hovering drones.
So here is my story:
On the evening of October 12, 2024, I went out on my 6th floor balcony to try to locate the comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) to photograph it. It was shortly after sunset and I scanned the western sky with my telephoto lens. As I was scanning, my attention was drawn to a strange vertical object that appeared to be "hanging" in the sky in the distance. I photographed it so as to bring up the image on my camera screen and saw a dark object with a small round "head" and two wavy "streamers" hanging down from it. It stayed in pretty much the same position for 6 minutes (gradually climbing higher at times). As the sky darkened, I saw a white light on each side of the head and soon after that, just one light (red) on the right side. Suddenly the streamers became much shorter and more diffuse (like smoke). Their appearance was dark at the top, reddish in the middle, and whitish at the bottom.
If the streamers had been smoke, I was surprised that they didn't change in shape more. The wind speed at the time was 8 mph (from WNW).
Information about the following photos is given below each image. You can enlarge the photo by clicking on it.
Taken at 6:54; clouds under the object are present.
Taken at 6:56; this photo shows the area of the sky to the right of the original object. If you enlarge it and zoom way in, there is an object in the upper left corner. It has truncated streamers and there are no clouds present. I believe this indicates that there were two similar objects as evidenced by the next photo (taken seconds later) which shows the original object still in the sky.
Taken at 6:56, this is the original object with long streamers and clouds visible (however the object appears to have climber higher).
Taken at 6:58; long streamers; shows the object's position in relation to a building.
Taken at 6:59; long streamers.
Taken at 7:01; short streamers.
Taken at 7:01; short streamers with a white light on each side of the "head".
Taken at 7:02; I zoomed in to 400mm focal length; short streamers (dark at top, reddish in middle, whitish at bottom); now a red light appears on the right-hand side.
Note: all the photos were taken at 236 mm focal length except for the last one which was at 400 mm.
The photos have not been manipulated in any way (except for the cropped first photo) other than to reduce the file size.
It may be relevant to add that the Montreal international airport in Dorval is located in the general direction in which the photos were taken (about 7 miles from my apartment building). These objects could be violating the rules regarding airspace around airports.