I saw a moving "star"!

See, I told you in my earlier post that if people haven't actually saw one they come up with all these silly conclusions. Must have been this, must have been that.

People, I'm telling you that there are things in the night sky that appear "exactly" like stars, not Venus thank you, and for whatever reason, and whatever they are, they all of a sudden find that it's time to move. And they MOVE. Not slowly float in one direction, not shoot like a falling star. Some of the posts crack me up. It's like saying we mistook the moon for a UFO.

My guess is that they are orbs and if you find one by "chance" and start staring at it, it gets spooked or something and decides it's time to leave. Or, you just get lucky staring at the right spot in the night sky to catch one, or two in my case.

Also, they have the perfect cover. They appear exactly like a star, well, until they decide to move that is.

I'm sorry that everyone here has not seen what the OP and I are talking about. Not everyone will see a UFO, not everyone will win the lottery. Just because you don't win the lottery doesn't mean that it's not real.

You are a few miles from an airport and you are witnessing traffic patterns for landing aircraft. What you have described is exactly what I used to see when I lived about five miles from an airport with decent traffic.

Removed offensive post

[edit on 27-2-2007 by sanctum]

Originally posted by Freezer
Closest thing I saw resembling a anything usual, was a object I thought was a star. I know a bit about astronomy, so it wasn't any of the planets. It was the brightness of Jupiter, and was at the top of the sky (San Francisco). After observing it for a couple minutes, the light very slowly dimmed out. I was gonna go home and view it through my scope, but it dimmed to darkness. I asked other astronomers what it could've been, but I haven't heard an explanation.

Ah, finally!
This is very similar to a mysterious light that I saw. This looked for all the world like a regular star, except that it was in the wrong place (An extra star in the tail of the Big Dipper). After several seconds, while I was staring and trying to figure out what it could be, it just slowly faded away to darkness. At no point did it ever move, it just looked like it was "switched off"

Hi!

I also saw a fast moving very bright star on sunday 25.02.07 in south germany.
It moved straight from west to the east. I am looking often to the sky and i am
sure that that was no satellite. It was too bright. It could maybe be the ISS.
Maybe we have seen the same thing?

I added an image that shows the appearance of what i saw.
BE CAREFUL! IT IS PAINTED BY ME! Its not a photo.

Of course i mean the brightest star on the picture


We should be able to figure out if the ISS was above germany on sunday evening. It was about 19:15 o´clock (gmt +1).

[edit on 27-2-2007 by allMIGHTY]

I've seen those moving stars many times. SOme way up in space, moving faster than an airplane. Dunno what they are but I would'nt think a satellite would move that fast however I don't know.

The original post could not have been a satellite.

The OP described the light as standing still, then seemingly move one way, the move back the other way. Then, he (or she) went in the house and came back out 1/2 hour later and the star was still there, not moving. That doesn't sound like a satellite (although many of the subsequent posters definitely described satellites.)

I'm pretty sure what the OP described was just an optical illusion. Very often if you look up at a star and fix your gaze on that one star for a period of time, it will begin to look like it's "wiggling", espescially if you're standing up with your head tilited back, trying to look almost straight up. Of course it isn't really wiggling, it's just an optical illusion.

[edit on 27-2-2007 by Soylent Green Is People]

Originally posted by DJMessiah
OP, if you live in Georgia, you may have seen the exact same thing as me. I'm collecting photos and videos of this extremely bright object I see at night that stays motionless one minute, and then starts moving in one direction. I have seen this object almost every night for the past 3 months.

I will make a thread next week with all the video and images I have taken of this object and will post them. Please feel free to comment on it.

What would be more useful than photos or video of a point of light would be careful notes. If you have one of those headlamps with a red LED, that's really useful. Note the EXACT time, atmospheric conditions, angle above the horizon, exactly when ti starts to move, adn the angle subtended by the motion.

If the weather is clear, then noting the constellations it is in and moving against could really rule out a lot of possible explanations. There are lots of online resources and free software you can use (I like Stellarium) to identify the constellations if you don't know them.

The weather was completely clear last night and the object could be seen without any light pollution. The camera I am using is a picture camera, not a traditional video/dvd camera, but it does allow video recording. I'm not sure if it as and LED light, but I guess I'll find out tonight.

I see these frequently. While some may be chalked up to conventionality, others are completely non-conventional. I have watched these objects pull 90 degree turns, stop on a dime, accelerate from a dead stop to unbelievable speeds, etc.,etc...I have also seen some of these objects fade out in the presence of military craft, then reappear once the craft is at a safe distance.

Originally posted by DJMessiah
OP, if you live in Georgia, you may have seen the exact same thing as me. I'm collecting photos and videos of this extremely bright object I see at night that stays motionless one minute, and then starts moving in one direction. I have seen this object almost every night for the past 3 months.

I will make a thread next week with all the video and images I have taken of this object and will post them. Please feel free to comment on it.

DJMessiah - If you're going to get a video, make sure in at least some parts of the video that we can see the object move in the same frame against some fixed point of reference (a tree, a building, a hill,etc.) That would make the relative motion much easier to discern. In the case of so many videos of moving lights, the camera is "following" the light across a clear sky, with nothing in the frame except sky and object. In these cases the relative motion is almost impossible to quantify, and could be attributed to the movements of the camera.

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective
I see these frequently. While some may be chalked up to conventionality, others are completely non-conventional. I have watched these objects pull 90 degree turns, stop on a dime, accelerate from a dead stop to unbelievable speeds, etc.,etc...I have also seen some of these objects fade out in the presence of military craft, then reappear once the craft is at a safe distance.

Thank you, this is exactly what the OP is talking about. They are not stars, the remains of the Sputnik, or any "conventional" aircraft. They are weird. I saw an earlier post of noticing a star out of place, then it dims out. Exactly. It's like these things "know" we are checking them out.

We are not alone ;-)

Originally posted by knows_but_doesnt

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective
I see these frequently. While some may be chalked up to conventionality, others are completely non-conventional. I have watched these objects pull 90 degree turns, stop on a dime, accelerate from a dead stop to unbelievable speeds, etc.,etc...I have also seen some of these objects fade out in the presence of military craft, then reappear once the craft is at a safe distance.

Thank you, this is exactly what the OP is talking about. They are not stars, the remains of the Sputnik, or any "conventional" aircraft. They are weird. I saw an earlier post of noticing a star out of place, then it dims out. Exactly. It's like these things "know" we are checking them out.

We are not alone ;-)

That is exactly right. Whatever, or whoever they are, they are not 'one of ours' (as they avoid/hide from our jets) or some easily explainable craft.

I also saw one, that for some odd reason did not fade out, being pursued by a military jet-It absolutely dusted it like it was standing still. LOL

I live on an island in Greece about 150km from the nearest city. There are several towns nearby but normally the sky is crystal clear so normally i get a clear view, even in the winter months.

Satellites don't stand still and then suddenly accelerate. They are in orbit and travel at a constant velocity throughout. I have seen satellites on many occasions so I know this was not the case this time.

Planes also don't stand and then accelerate. They may change direction, gradually slow down or increase speed but not suddenly and not on a dime!

Meteorites usually just fall or speed across the sky and then disappear but they usually have a tail streak as they hit earths atmosphere and disintegrate. What I saw was a somewhat brighter than average star at 30,000 ft(10,000 m) that was standing still and then suddenly started moving left. While it was moving it started blinking/strobbing like a plane(orange color) then it stopped/turned around after 3-4 seconds and went back to its original position again at the same speed It's speed wasn't too fast. I would say it traveled at jet speed(400-500knots). When it stopped it also stopped blinking. This is certainly no optical illusion!

Originally posted by Freezer
The space station can be seen by the naked eye as well. It looks exactly like a regular star in many instances. I can go outside with my 80mm binos and spot satellites any clear night. Their kinda cool to watch, and they move quickly.

T
That's why I labeled mine this... My sighting wasn't impressive (speaking relatively to the other descriptions posted here), as the motion & direction was constant and fairly fast, which would rule out star & planitary movement. I have to lean more twards space station though, since most satalites are in geo-synronous orbit (sorry 'bout the spelling), and most travel around the equator (all be it, after reading more posts, maybe I'm wrong about this).

he light that I saw was also barely visible, and I lost it after about 10 seconds. I couldn't exactly follow it to the horizon. When I did see it it was directly over my head, about as literally straight up as you can get...

[edit on 2/27/2007 by bobby3]

Originally posted by bobby3
I have to lean more twards space station though, since most satalites are in geo-synronous orbit (sorry 'bout the spelling), and most travel around the equator.
[edit on 2/27/2007 by bobby3]

A geo-synronous orbit wouldn't be traveling around the equator. A lot of what are being refer a 'satellites' are rocket bosters, stages, etc in orbit. A person can check a site like heavens-above.com to see if an object passing can be identified as such. Last time I saw IIS it was quite bright.

Space junk might fade in and out in brightness, but no, they don't make right turns and pit stops.

Interesting theory that when a person looks at one of these star-like objects, it sees the person and decides to move away. None of the stars out here do that but then I wear glasses so may they figure I won't actually know they are there.

I'm curious where the OP was. I am in the DC region and saw something like this last night at about 9:30 pm on my way home from school. The sky was mostly black and the object for the most part seemed to stay in place, but was hard to tell if it was moving, but it's light(s) did seem to flash. If I remember correctly, the lights were mostly an orange color.

Originally posted by bobby3
T
That's why I labeled mine this... My sighting wasn't impressive (speaking relatively to the other descriptions posted here), as the motion & direction was constant and fairly fast, which would rule out star & planitary movement. I have to lean more twards space station though, since most satalites are in geo-synronous orbit (sorry 'bout the spelling), and most travel around the equator (all be it, after reading more posts, maybe I'm wrong about this).


[edit on 2/27/2007 by bobby3]

Most satellites are Low Earth Orbit (LEO). All satellites you can see with the naked eye are LEO. ALL satellites pass through the equator twice per orbit, but most are visible much further north and south for part of their orbits, and a significant fraction fly near the poles, which maximizes their coverage of the Earth and can also be used to achieve a nearly constant geometry relative to the sun (so-called "sun synchronous" orbits).

ISS is a very bright satellite, but if you go out satellite observing (early evening or early morning), most of what you will see is not ISS. Some of the most commonly observed LEO birds are the Iridium constellation, since they predictably "flare" on a frequent basis - the angle from a reflective spacecraft surface (either a solar array or a radiator panel) to the observer is the same as the angle from the surface to the sun and they are in the same plane, so you see a brief (a few seconds) and very bright flare. This is just like a signal mirror on the ground.

You can't see GEO satellites without a telescope, although you might occasionally pick up a short flare that might be just visible on a dark night.

Originally posted by Twin4002
I've seen those moving stars many times. SOme way up in space, moving faster than an airplane. Dunno what they are but I would'nt think a satellite would move that fast however I don't know.

A satellite certainly looks like a moving star (a plane doesn't, IMO), and once it is away from the horizon it will move at a good pace. It will typically cross the entire sky in a few minutes.

If it passes overhead, or nearly overhead, not the exact time, and it should be fairly easy to determine which satellite it was.

I recently (last 5 September) saw something that looked very much like a satellite, but passed almost overhead at 2 minutes before local midnight, which is nearly impossible. What's more, it was orange, even when overhead. I'm considering that one truly unidentified, although I make no claims about its origin or nature.

I've seen the same sort of thing too.



People keep trying to write this stuff off as satallites. But, maybe it's time for people to accept the fact that people all over the world are seeing the same phenomina. Several people from around the world, who have seen both satallites and these unidentified arial objects claim that they are NOT satallites but something else that leaves them stumped.

I agree about the optical illusions. The eye does make stars appear to wiggle, but deffinantly not move signifigantly across the sky at high speeds. So my question is this. How far did the object move from it's resting position before it returned back to it's starting point. Was it a few degrees in the sky. Ie... if you held your hand out at arms leangth how many centimeters or inches did appear to move. If it was more than a wiggle than you probably can rule out the optical illusion. Also, how long did it take for it to complete this manuever.

The eye can also twitch and make an object appear to jump suddenly when it was just the eye. It's possible that thats happened and you were concentrating on the object enought to not notice everything else jump too. Allthough if you say everything else was static and the just the star moved than I'll take your word for it. After all it's not so strange I've seen what i would call a UFO acting just like you described.

You said that there were some clouds in the sky. The object could have appeared to have moved but in actuallity the clouds were moving giving the star an appearance of traveling. However. You said that you observed this object for some time. I've been fooled momentarily by this type of illusion when briefly looking at stars, but after a few seconds you can figure out it's the clouds moving and not the star. If you say that you watched it for a while and it was the object moving and not the clouds creating an effect than again I'll take your word on it. I don't think most people especially ATSrs would be fooled by that type of illusion for more than a minute. We have to give some credit to human senses and common sense, which I think would come into play in this instance.

The pulsing could be atmospheric, but if it only did it while it appeared to move seems to discredit that idea too.

Having seen similar stuff before, I believe you saw an actual UFO.