posted on Jul, 8 2010 @ 08:01 PM
I just saw something interesting.
I got up about fifteen minutes ago to go make a sandwich because I was hungry. I thought that, before I turn on the kitchen light, I would take a
look outside through the window of my kitchen to look at the stars; which is something I don't get to do too much of anymore. (I live on the top
floor of the house that I'm in and there is a slant window in the kitchen which gives one an awesome look at the night sky.)
Upon peering out the window, I immediately saw mighty Jupiter sitting the eastern sky. I also noticed two other stars in the sky, just as bright as
Jupiter, not only close to Jupiter, but close to one another; one of them was "above" the other.
I thought to myself, "Wow, I wonder what planets those are next to Jupiter. Was there going to be a conjunction?" I realized that there wasn't
going to be as none of the planets that would be visible in the sky right now would be so bright, except maybe Saturn.
I was curious at what I was looking at, and I decided that I would go to a different room so that I could see these points of light better. When I
turned around and started walking away, it hit me that one of the lights was getting dimmer! So I rushed back to my slant window and kept watching
for fear that I would lose them (I could see them well anyway).
So, I kept watching. Sure enough, one of them was getting gradually dimmer. Once the "bottom" one finished fading, the other light did the same;
gradually fading away to nothing. I knew for sure I wasn't looking at a planet then!
One other thing to mention is that these two lights were stationary.
So, I made my sandwich and thought that I would cover my bases. I loaded Stellarium and sure enough, in this region of sky, only Jupiter is visible
(Uranus is there too, but it wouldn't ever get this bright unless it was going to plow into the Earth). I then went to Heaven's Above to look and
see for ISS and Iridium Flares and there was nothing. There were two other satellites (Genesis 1 and 2) that were passing over during the time, but
they wouldn't have gotten so bright. Again, the lights were stationary so it really couldn't have been anything passing overhead anyway.
So, it would seem that as of now, I saw something unidentified. Maybe someone else could shed some light on this. Another thought I had is that this
could be flares. Like, maybe the military is doing an exercise or something (which wouldn't be surprising because there have been a lot of military
aircraft flying over my town lately). What would be the distinguishing marks of these lights having been flares as opposed to something "other
worldly"?
Any other thoughts and comments are welcome!