|
Over the last twenty years that I have been observing, there have been only two things which I have seen that I could not account for immediately. After doing some basic research, I found out what both things were.
The first thing was a small faint cloud following the Space Shuttle as I watched it go over one evening. I later found out this cloud was a liquid dump whereby the waste liquid is dumped to space, it freezes and I was seeing sunlight reflected off the small ice cloud.
Second were two satellites, both reasonably bright (mag ~2) with one sat. trailing the other in the same orbit. The trajectory was north-south. I knew they were satellites as they were travelling at "satellite speed" (if you know what I mean) and as they went through Crux, the lead sat. faded off and the second one did the same at the same spot. It turns out I had just seen my first NOSS pair. Basically they are spy sats. launched by the US.
So these things were unexplained initially, but were soon resolved.
Peter.
|