Yup, you guessed it. Another UFO story.

I'm posting this here, because I truly don't know what I saw last night. I've been pondering it all day.

Last night, I was gazing into the stars, just imagining my future (I'm about to go back to school for my aerospace engineering degree, and want to eventually work on a manned mission to Mars). I was looking at the small point of light that is the International Space Station. Then I glanced to the North, and looked at the big dipper. Near the last star in the handle of the Big Dipper, I noticed another "star" that hadn't been there previously. Being mildly drunk, I didn't think too much about it, and looked back at the ISS. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and glanced back to the Big Dipper. The new "star" had moved.

I continued to watch this point of light move across the sky. It wasn't moving that fast, yet fast enough to be noticeable. At that point, I thought it was a shooting star, but oddly enough, there was no trail, as is common with an object entering the atmosphere. I studied the object, looking for some hint of strobes on wings or anything else that might identify it as an aircraft. I saw nothing - just this single point of light moving across the sky.

I truly don't know what this object was. It was just a point of light, moving across the sky. I watched it as it moved about 60 degrees through the night sky, starting near the handle of the Big Dipper, and fading out to nothing just past the ISS, blinking out altogether just before becoming obscured by the roof of my house.

This truly was a UFO - either an Unidentified Flying Object or an Unidentified Falling Object.

There's any number of logical explanations I can think of for this object - high flying aircraft or space debris entering the atmosphere. Both of these possibly make sense, yet don't fit into all the basic criteria for these objects. I don't think it was anything alien in origin (at least not as far as an alien spacecraft - though a meteor is possible). I'm just trying to figure out what I saw.

The basic facts, without speculation, are as follows:

- The object was first noticed near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper.
- The object was just a single point of light, with no trail or strobes noticeable.
- The object moved roughly 60 degrees across the sky, from North to South (roughly), gradually becoming dimmer.
- The object finally disappeared just after passing the ISS.
- The rough time (I wasn't really keeping track, other than a general time sense) was 10:30pm, Eastern Standard Time.
- I am located just north of Washington DC, in the middle of three major commercial airports, and near one major Air Force Base, One medium-sized Air National Guard base, and a small Army airbase. Air traffic is common and frequent around here.


Anyone have any suggestions as to what I saw?




*Edit for grammar*

[edit on 6/21/2007 by obsidian468]