Odd Lights in West and South West

[supernova1965]

Hi Everyone

I was doing some sky gazing mostly looking at the moon as its very bright and not much else is showing except for Jupiter and on some breaks from looking through my 10" Meade Starfinder Dob I saw a bright white light about the size of Jupiter by naked eye that started below and to the right of Hadar and moved up past Rigel Kent gradually fading and going red before disappearing just above Rigel Kent this happened about 8.30pm on Sun 30/8/2009. Then in the West below and to the right of Antares like a shooting star but no trail it traveled right to left down at an angle of 25 degrees. If anyone has any ideas please reply. :hi:

[Funk]

omg, I think we saw the same thing. I'm no expert or anything, I just stumbled upon these forums trying to find someone that saw what I saw. Last night about the same time you saw your light, I saw the tiniest pin prick of a reddish light that looked like a star which was much less brigther than the most of other stars nearby move very slowly from from the top downwards towards around the southern cross, and as it went down it faded away. Then to my amazement another reddish starlike light which looked the same as before came into view nearby from where the previous faded away and move upwards very slowly till I could no longer see it.

I have no idea exactly what it could have been, perhaps space junk or some satellite?

edit: I forgot to say that I saw this by a stroke of luck, I went to throw something in my recycling bin when I decided to have a gaze at the stars. Lucky me lol :)

[Benno85]

I too noticed this last night. I thought I was the after effects of numerous cans of Mr Daniels, but my wife also noticed it.

Sorry that I can't offer any explanation :shrug:

[xstream]

Warren, I'm currently in Emerald and believe you probably saw the ISS last night.
We watched it rise at 19:15 from the S.W. to W.S.W reaching -3.1 mag. Your description fits, just your time is out by about an hour.
Could this of been it?

[supernova1965]

No it must have been about 20:00 or 20:30 because I setup at 19:00 after having to move due to a tradesman working on a house near me with outdoor lights on after I had setup the first time

Thanks for replying

[Benno85]

I noticed the light below Jupiter at approximately 7:00pm, from Mount Annan in NSW.

[bmitchell82]

more than likely it was a sattelite of some sort. there are things called iridium flares. basically its the reflection of the sun of the solar panels. they often "blink" very brightly, but can start out small brighten up then fade away, that would explain the slow moving and at that time its perfect to see aka, your in the shadow of the earth, the sattelite is in the sun. The one thing with these objects though you have to be in a narrow track to view them at full brightness, the further off the track the duller it becomes.!

hevens above i think track iridium flares, and i know starry nights does as well.

[astroron]

As has been posted before on these forums, there are thousands of Satellites, Bits of Space Junk, and other Debris floating about out there.
A lot are not in "Heavens Above" as they are military Satellites.
Sometimes if the sky is smoky or the satellite is low down it could look red because of looking through the dense atmosphere and the sun quite a bit below the horizon:thumbsup:

[renormalised]

Or maybe....just maybe, it might be a ....<queue "Twilight Zone" theme>...:ship1::ship1::ship2:

[astroron]

Carl!to much of this:D:cheers::cheers::cheers:

[daveg]

FWIW I work in air traffic control in shannon ireland and 2 controllers reported to me that while driving home they saw a bright light move across the sky in the northwest. they rang the tower and approach sector who had no aircraft. from the description in was moving slowly nw about 10-20deg up about mag -3. It seemingly travelled the less than the length of the Plough in 4-5mins. reddish colour but i presume this was from the low altiude. they also described a smaller light appearing from it then dissapearing. event happened on sat night 29th about 10pm ut. We dont get bright satallites that low here and since it was constant an IR flare can be ruled out.

I dont prescribe to UFOs so im sure theres some logical explanation.

Dave Gradwell

[Octane]

I think that was Iridium 914. :)

Regards,
Humayun

[Royster]

Several weeks ago I witnessed above Cairns at about 7.15 PM (as did many others) 5 bright lights, brighter than Jupiter moving NE/SW quite high in the sky at my latitude, drifting as they went so that different patterns were apparent, until they entered the milky way starfield below Crux, where they slowed down and faded completely from view. I observed them through binoculars and they were still point sources, so I thought that they were quite distant. No sounds, no flashing, CONSTANT brightness - it was hard to see which was "them" and which was Beta centauri at one stage. All this took about 15/20 mins. I have seen all the common stuff including space junk re-entry, irridian etc and there is no simple/obvious explanation to my mind. What do others think?

Of course local media went overboard for a few days, mostly nonsense of course, but I wonder how many UFOs, have been seen over large cities? Royster:eyepop: