Strange lights over Yorkshire moors - thermal imaging footage?

Right, so me and my mate Dave were out near Haworth last Saturday about 11pm, bit of a clear night after all that rain. Saw these odd orange-ish lights dancing about over the moors for a good twenty minutes. Not helicopters, not drones, genuinely no sound whatsoever.

My question is: has anyone had luck with thermal imaging cameras for capturing this sort of thing? I've got about £300 to spend and want something that's not complete rubbish but won't cost me more than my car's worth. Also, should I be looking at something with video capability or is stills enough?

Dave reckons I should get one of those fancy night vision scopes instead, but I reckon thermal would be more useful for picking up heat signatures if there's anything actually there. Thoughts?

You want a FLIR or Seek thermal camera mate. I've got the Seek Compact Pro and it's brilliant for the money - around £350 last time I looked, does video and stills. The resolution isn't amazing but it's more than enough to spot heat anomalies. Fair warning though, thermal imaging picks up everything warm, so you'll get loads of false positives from foxes, badgers, warm rocks from daytime heating, all sorts.

Not helicopters, not drones, genuinely no sound whatsoever.

Mate, I hate to be that person but... lanterns? Chinese lanterns are absolutely rife in Yorkshire and they're silent. Not saying that's what you saw, but thermal wouldn't necessarily help distinguish a lantern from something else interesting. Have you looked into whether there were any reported sightings in that area recently?

Skip the thermal, get yourself a proper astronomy camera instead. Something like a used astronomy CCD camera will pick up faint objects way better than thermal for this kind of thing. I spent ages messing about with thermal before realising I was looking at the wrong end of the spectrum. Check Cloudy Nights forum for recommendations - those lot know their stuff.

Did you get any footage on your phone at all? Even rubbish phone footage is better than no footage. And honestly if you're serious about this, a £300 thermal camera AND a decent torch and a notebook will serve you better than a £300 camera alone. Document everything - time, date, weather, exact location, witnesses, direction, movement patterns, everything. The equipment's just the cherry on top.