I let the dog out on the back garden last night, looked up to watch a plane that had taken off from the airport some 12 miles away from where we live.

While watching the plane which was in the west sky, I noticed what I considered to be a really bright star. After a couple of seconds I noticed that it was actually moving. Probably as fast as a plane, or maybe a bit slower (I'm not too good with speeds) It quietly moved right across the sky. Once the noise of the first plane had died out I noticed that the star like light had no noise what so ever.

It travelled in a straight line from the west to the east of the sky, and I think I watched it for around 1-2 minutes in total.

I live in the east Midlands UK, and the time was around 12-15am. It looked just like that really bright star(planet) that is in the south east sky at night, I'm pretty certain it wasn't a plane. It didn't have any flashing lights, and the brightness stayed the same all the way across the sky. I have had a search around to see if it was the ISS (and I don't think it was) But I was wondering if it may have been some other satellite?

Any idea's would be appreciated.

Thanks for your reply.

The ISS would make sense, when I checked it out earlier though the only dates and times I could find were for June. These stated that the ISS wouldn't be back over the UK for some time, so I assumed it couldn't have been that.

I will check out the site and see what it says.

Thanks for your help.

Julie.

Edited to ask: what is the HA site?

[edit on 20-7-2008 by ceekay]

Hi,

After going to Heavens Above, I realised I'm already registered with them, but could never figure out what I was looking for on there.

I have logged in and after sussing out how to work the site, checked the details of the ISS last night, and that was definitely what I saw. What a strange and quite creepy thing to watch! I actually kept thinking to myself, "what if I go in home and I'm an hours worth of time missing!"

Then I got myself in check and started to wonder if it was the ISS... and it was, I would be looking out again tonight, but guess what?... It's cloudy, which is a really common occurrence here, lol.

Thanks again for your help. Much appreciated.

Julie.

Hey Julie. Glad to help. You could probably go out on any given night and see a number of orbiting objects. If you get a chance to check out the ISS when it is orbiting with the space shuttle do so. It's like two very bright stars chasing each other. Quite cool.

Rush