Is it Possible To see a Star Fall from its stationary position?

My memory is getting worse so I apologise if I have asked this question before, I don't want to get into the specifics of my sighting, because it will invaribly lead to people asking if i misttook a falling star for a meteor.

Since their appears to be very knowledgeable Space experts here I just would like to ask this.

Is it possible to see a star in the night sky in the same position emitting fiery embers (this is how it appeared) for a number of nights , then one night it falls and dissappears?

I know it wasn't a falling star in the meteor sense 100%. as it was in the same location for several nights.

Just want to ask if I could have seen a dying star?

Its bugged me for a long time I was only a ten year old at the time, and I used to watch the stars a lot.

I am in no way/shape/form an Astrophysicist, but if you may allow me to make an educated guess...

I would say that our view of space is really looking back in time, because the distance of these stellar bodies are measured in light years from the Earth. Light is the fastest traveling energy we know of so far, and it would take awhile after the fact before we could see any stars 'falling'.

Also, I do not think the star would 'fall' so much as it would implode upon itself creating a brown dwarf star, or a black hole if it were to reach the end of it's existence.

That is what I think...

OK, can someone with real credential answer the OP?

Peace to you all

reply to post by Dr Expired


First you need to realize that when you look at a star you are actually observing the light emitted by the star, and not the star itself. If a star is 100 light years away, you are seeing the light that it produced 100 years ago. For all we know that star could have went supernova 15 years ago, but we won't know that for another 85 years. This light travels in a straight line for the most part. It may be bent slightly by gravity and other forces, but it is almost impossible to observe that without the aid of some pretty expensive and high tech equipment.

The answer to your question is no. You may have seen a satellite or some other man made space craft or equipment fall, or you may have seen a Reptilian shuttle craft exploding. Who knows.

If it was a star and you saw it move live, it would have to be going beyond light speed and that is impossible. So the astute answer is no. It's not was you think you saw. What kind of telescope were you using if I may ask?

The ISS right now is the 4th brightest object in the night sky, if the sun is striking it's solar panels just right it can even be brighter than Venus temporarily. Any star in the night sky is less brighter than first the moon, then Venus, then Jupiter/ISS, depending, a true star would be the 5th brightest object in the night sky and that would be Sirius.

The ISS will traverse your visual sky in about 3 minutes no matter where you can see it on the earth's surface. I hope this helps. You can look up where the ISS is at your location from a website I don't happen to have bookmarked right now, (but maybe I should bookmark that) it may help to explain some sightings here.

There are also a lot of manmade satellites brighter than stars in the night sky, I always wanted to film one...

The ISS is only 220 miles from the surface of the earth.

If you ever drove down a distant highway from civilization lights in Nevada lets say, those headlights from an approaching semi look very bright about a half an hour before you pas that truck (roughly about 50 miles away), its all relative. I turned off my highbeems like 15 minutes before we got close to passing, because of depth perception and I live in a city and not used to darkness, and was not used to how far you can see lights.

These were just headlights on a truck!

Originally posted by Illustronic
If it was a star and you saw it move live, it would have to be going beyond light speed and that is impossible. So the astute answer is no. It's not was you think you saw. What kind of telescope were you using if I may ask?

It was visible with the naked eye and it was many years ago ,I know and respect what you are saying is probably correct but I saw what I saw, for years I thought thats what was meant when people talked about falling stars.
Imagine my confusion when I learned it meant a meteorite .
To this day I cannot work out how noone else among my family friends and peers at school han't seen it when I brought the subject up at the time .
I mean when the star was stationary and red like with embers sparks emitting from it.
Iam convinced it wasn't a spaceship , because they don;t just stay in the same position do they?
Later in life a friend told me it was a dying star but I shouldn't have been a ble to observe it.
For months afterwards I looked for another "falling star" sic, but never saw one again.
It was in Australia where my Father was stationed in 1975 0r 76 from memory.

I have a star question ..

Outside when I am on my deck I can see this stationary star or what ever it is it’s is as high as other stars in relation to it .. but the thing about this star is that it flickers a yellow color not white and I don’t have a telescope but hope soon to be getting one as I’m checking into that as to the pixels that would be able to zoom in on this type of thing …so I am lost in that issue .. but why would a star shine a yellow color or flicker in a color ?? So that is good to know about what the OP asked I was always wandering stuff like that too as I am always watching the sky I sleep right by the deck door and with all the lights off and a clear night I can see some stuff with my binoculars interesting topic

reply to post by Dr Expired


If no one else saw it that should be a 'SIGN'!

'Signs' like that in my life (I have never yet experienced), that nobody else can verify, I ignore. The mind is a complicated organism, and perception is less understood. Be that as it may, simple facts. I have daydreamed before, even achieved orgasm totally unconscious, which is much more pleasurable than seeing a star, in fact, I saw many!

No, Stars are stationary objects. Think of our sun.It is a star....

If you saw something move, it was not a hard.

reply to post by Illustronic


Better than a world moving?
Yeah I get what you are saying , I guess though it was a rather long imagining?
From memory it was there for at least two to three nights.
Anyway I was rather hoping for a n answer that said you saw this rare event and what you saw was...
I know the mists of time can blur the facts, but I was a kid who watched the night sky almost every night for a time and who had a small telescope, so I wasn't unfamiliar with the appearance of stars ect I knew that if you put the scope out of focus a star would get bigger in the scope ect , I knew the difference between planets and stars,and had observed the stars moving with the Earths rotation, to me this was a star,a glowing reddish star, that had sparks or embers intermittently leaving it, the sparks were very close to the object they didn't trail across the sky or anything.
Then on the night in question approx 7 to 8pm the object fell after glowing and emitting intense sparks/embers it fell straight down approx 5 degrees, then vanished.
Perhaps someone has seen this type of thing before?
I respect totally what you are saying about perception and daydreaming, but thet thing is it was there I was alone on each occasion as my parents both worked late, so I couldn't run inside the house and go hey Dad come and look at this weird star.
And around that time I had seen glowing objects like venus at sunset ect, so it wasn't that unusual to my mind until it fell,and years later realising the term "Falling Star" relates to meteors not actual falling stars in the sky.
Anyway thanks for the input of all so far.

reply to post by Dr Expired

Did it turn the water bitter?

Stars don’t ‘fall’. No celestial object behaves as you describe.

Moreover, nothing can possibly happen in the heavens without people around the world noticing. If you think you saw something nobody else saw in the sky, you didn’t see it, you imagined it. Disappointing, but true.

reply to post by Astyanax



If someone could tell me logically it was this or that I would in fact be satisfied even if it was a spotlight hoax ect.

I am just stating for the record Iam not lying or posing a hypothetical Iam genuinely curious to the nature of what I saw, I logically can only assume it was a dying star, and that I saw its last moments, but more educated members have already explained why this wasn't possible, so you can see my predicament.

in the universe...there is no DOWN for something to fall towards...also keep in mind..that when you see something falling on earth..its not falling down..its going towards the gravitational attraction..so Stars and Planets has no DOWN to fall to..they just spin since its the movement obtained during birth

Originally posted by Dr Expired
Then on the night in question approx 7 to 8pm the object fell after glowing and emitting intense sparks/embers it fell straight down approx 5 degrees, then vanished.
Perhaps someone has seen this type of thing before?

Yes someone has seen something like this before. Even with our own sun.

There is a name for it when it happens to our own sun, it's called the Novaya Zemlya effect. This requires a unique thermal layer in the atmosphere which elevates the sun's apparent position by perhaps 5 degrees, and when this layer is disrupted, the sun can appear to fall 5 degrees. There can certainly be streaks, or other effects when it "falls". Of course it doesn't actually "fall" 5 degrees, it just looks that way.

What made me think of this explanation is what the witnesses reported in this other temperature inversion:

www.caelestia.be...
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/2513e065cb52.jpg[/atsimg]

This photo was published in the January 8, 2005 edition of the Mexican newspaper El Imparcial. The following "clarifications" were given: "HERMOSILLO, Sonora(PH) - More than half of a hill located on the Hermosillo coast apparently 'vanished'....The Mexican paper published 3 of the 12 pictures that were taken by their photographer. The image above is the first of this series and apparently shows not one but two "UFOs". The second photo is very similar except that, according to the newspaper's commentator, "Matter begins to fall from the object on the left before it lands on the hilltop". A subsequent investigation, however, revealed that chunks of the hillside were not swallowed up by spacecraft, but that the hills were still perfectly intact. In reality, the photos show a typical superior mirage, whereby distant mountain tops were not only stretched out vertically, but also mirrored in the sky above.

The witnesses to this thermal inversion described that the "UFO"s appeared to be "spraying" the mountainside. They didn't understand what was happening but to someone who has studied optical physics like myself, it's completely understandable.

What they saw wasn't "spraying" at all, but some instability in the temperature inversion. Much of that mountainside isn't real and what appears to be solid can "flicker in and out of existence". Of course it's just an optical distortion, but it looks real.

Now, imagine that a star was positioned alongside one of the hillside peaks. And you saw a superior mirage of the light next to the "flying saucer" in the photo, which is a reflection of the mountaintop.

Yes you could indeed see that star fall from it's apparent reflected position, to its actual position, and yes it could appear to be shedding sparks as it fell in much the same way that the witnesses of this photo stated that the "UFO"s were spraying the hillside. If the source of the spray is a light, you would see a "shower of sparks" from the light instead of the spray.

So this is a known (not well known, but known) natural phenomenon that could produce pretty much the exact visual effect you describe. Now of course the star doesn't actually move, but it could appear to fall from where the reflection of the mountaintop is, to the actual position of the mountaintop. And of course there doesn't necessarily have to be a mountain nearby, though these effects do seem to occur in valleys which are surrounded by mountains, which probably has something to do with the way they trap air layers.

And this is the only way I can think of that a star could appear to "fall" and emit a shower of sparks as it falls.

Did you previously have another ID on ATS? Because I could swear someone asked this exact same question before but the thread isn't showing up under your profile, so it was either you, or someone else with the same experience.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Thanks for the detailed and interesting reply, I can see how the atmosphere could play a part , sort of put the star out of focus like a telescope can, but just one problem, the sun was stil there , this star dissappeared , and it was at least 60 degrees above the mountainous horizon.
Yes it may have been posted before perhaps.

The sun was still out and you saw a star? Where on earth do you live, at least 200 miles from any city, town, or light pollution?

I was referring to Arbitaghers post he was referring to a similar type of event involving the sun and atmospheric inversions ect.
Iwas making the point that afterwards the sun would still exist in the sky , this star went Kaput and never came back as far as I know.

reply to post by Dr Expired


That would be my first clue it wasn't a star, but that's just me I suppose.

A falling star does not stay in the sky for days, it hits the atmosphere and burns up.
Whatever you saw was in orbit, maybe a failed satalite