Any Idea What I Just Saw?

[junkheap]

When I was out to lunch it was an incredibly clear day out. I was looking to the NW and I spotted what looked like a star. It was around 12:40 pm in Lindenwold, NJ. I was wearing polarized sunglasses, so the sky looked really dark. If I didn't have my sunglasses with me, I would have never noticed it. It moved from the NW to the SE and was about 60 to 70 degrees above the horizon at its closest approach. I checked the ISS tracker, but it doesn't seem to match up with what it shows for the ISS.

Any ideas? Is it possible for any other satellites to be visible during the daytime? Perhaps it could've been a plane flying at a really high altitude? I could only see a white dot. I wish I had a pair of binoculars with me.

 

[crazyeddie]

When I was out to lunch it was an incredibly clear day out. I was looking to the NW and I spotted what looked like a star. It was around 12:40 pm in Lindenwold, NJ. I was wearing polarized sunglasses, so the sky looked really dark. If I didn't have my sunglasses with me, I would have never noticed it. It moved from the NW to the SE and was about 60 to 70 degrees above the horizon at its closest approach. I checked the ISS tracker, but it doesn't seem to match up with what it shows for the ISS.

Any ideas? Is it possible for any other sattellites to be visible during the daytime? Perhaps it could've been a plane flying at a really high altitude? I could only see a white dot. I wish I had a pair of binoculars with me.

Iridium flares can reach magnitude -8, which is definitely visible in the daytime, so that's my guess.

 

[junkheap]

I just Heavens Above and the only thing it came up with was a flare for Iridium 26 at 5:26 am this morning, but nothing for the afternoon.

Could it have been any of these guys?

http://www.heavens-above.com/allsat...432&lng=-74.9762&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=EST

It seems Heavens Above will only give me listings for things visible after sunset and before sunrise.

 

[MeteorWayne]

My guess would be an aircraft on final approach to Philly International. An Iridium flare (especially in the daytime) would last 5 seconds at most. However with the sky darkened by the polarized sunglasses (which would not affect the landing lights) a jet could stand out quite clearly, and last up to a few minutes.

How long did it last? I didn't see that in your post.
For the 2 hours preceeding and at 12:53 PM, the wind was out of the north; the main runway is a due east west one, so the approach could be from the due east or due west. If it was from due east, that would have placed the jet's path 5 miles due north of you (of course, at due north, the light would not be pointing at you) at ~ 5-10 thousand feet. So you would have seen it approaching from the ENE, passing NE of you until the light no longer pointed at you.

Meteor Wayne

 

[junkheap]

I was observing it for about 2 to 3 minutes. I don't think it was coming to or from Philadelphia Airport. Lindenwold, NJ is fairly close to the airport, so the planes I see coming and going are already pretty low. This one was up high enough that all I could see was a dot. Maybe it was going to or from another airport? It was moving parallel from NW to SE to the railroad tracks that I was standing next to which go from NW to SW at a 45 degree angle.

Check out Lindenwold (NJT station) on Google maps.

 

[Beanze]

I saw something last night that sounds similar to what you're describing. Single point white dot in the night sky moving like nothing else you can think of. Don't go "Airplane" yet. Seeing as it must have been quite up high, It can't go at an amazing speed across the sky from East to West in aprox 40 seconds. It wasn't an optical illusion either. None of those would force me to move my head to keep watching. I don't know what I saw either, looked an awful lot like a star, accelerating, moving, and what not. :/

Observing from Sweden by the way.

 

[MeteorWayne]

I saw something last night that sounds similar to what you're describing. Single point white dot in the night sky moving like nothing else you can think of. Don't go "Airplane" yet. Seeing as it must have been quite up high, It can't go at an amazing speed across the sky from East to West in aprox 40 seconds. It wasn't an optical illusion either. None of those would force me to move my head to keep watching. I don't know what I saw either, looked an awful lot like a star, accelerating, moving, and what not. :/

Observing from Sweden by the way.

What time was it? Sounds like the ISS. Where in Sweden at what time on what day?

 

[MeteorWayne]

I was observing it for about 2 to 3 minutes. I don't think it was coming to or from Philadelphia Airport. Lindenwold, NJ is fairly close to the airport, so the planes I see coming and going are already pretty low. This one was up high enough that all I could see was a dot. Maybe it was going to or from another airport? It was moving parallel from NW to SE to the railroad tracks that I was standing next to which go from NW to SW at a 45 degree angle.

Check out Lindenwold (NJT station) on Google maps.

In the day, you are not likely to see much of the aircraft itself under the conditions you describe.
Sorry I messed up the direction, my bad. The best guess then would be a jet on approach to ACY, about 35 miles to your ESE.

 

[Beanze]

I saw something last night that sounds similar to what you're describing. Single point white dot in the night sky moving like nothing else you can think of. Don't go "Airplane" yet. Seeing as it must have been quite up high, It can't go at an amazing speed across the sky from East to West in aprox 40 seconds. It wasn't an optical illusion either. None of those would force me to move my head to keep watching. I don't know what I saw either, looked an awful lot like a star, accelerating, moving, and what not. :/

Observing from Sweden by the way.

What time was it? Sounds like the ISS. Where in Sweden at what time on what day?

In Dalarna, It's sort of in the middle of Sweden. Precisely at 22.30. I was meeting my gf outside of our apartment.
Trust me, I've seen a whole lot of airplanes in my life but this one looks identical to my post last winter which you replied to - claiming it was an optical illusion. But this one really had me going. I had to walk around to follow it. A bright white single dot in the sky moving like a star never would, an airplane ever would. We don't have jets flying in Sweden as much as you could think but even if there were any "jets" they wouldn't act this way. Nor would they be visible to the naked eye. It was the same size as the surrounding stars. I think i saw it going around the constellation Perseus, turn 90 degrees and continuing in a straight line going south.

 

[MeteorWayne]

I know you don't want to hear, nor will you accept what I am about to say. (So this will be my last post in this thread) To the naked eye, stars, planets, and aircraft lights are all the same size...a point. People assume brightness means bigger, but that is not true. Everything in the sky, other than the sun, moon, or a comet, or a few galaxies, star clusters or galaxies is the same size. It's below the size that the eye can discern. So it's a point.

If it made a 90 degree turn, it's an aircraft.

 

[kg]

I saw something very similar here in Massachusetts yesterday, a white dot traveling slowly across the sky on a bright sunny day. It turned out to be just a piece of fluff like the ones that carry milkweed seeds about. It had dropped its seed and was being carried on the breeze quite easily. It was only about 40-50 feet or so above my head but it looked like it could have been hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of feet away! The whole effect was quite eerie for some reason. But I'm positve all it was was milkweed fluff slowly traveling on the breeze.

 

[junkheap]

Thanks for your input guys.

I'm a little disappointed that it wasn't the ISS that I saw, but perhaps some other time when it's in a better position.

 

[MeteorWayne]

If you want to find out when i's visible, go here:

http://heavens-above.com/

ENTER YOUR LOCATION!

Then "bookmark" the page. That way your location will come up when you open the site.

Then click on ISS or any of the other options. One or two other satellites are as bright as the top ten stars, so it's cool to look for them. For other dates, you can click on previous or next AM or PM, and keep doing that to go a week or so in the past or future.

 

[adrenalynn]

You'd be amazed (or not) at the number of "ufo" phone calls the radar reflector on a balloon can generate. The sun hits the reflector just right (or wrong) and it's up around FL300 screaming along the top of the jetstream and boom! It's a UFO! :lol:

 

[uberhund]

Thanks for bringing your usual sanity to the topic of UFOs, Adrenalynn (though this thread was already pretty sane). In addition to your authoritative contributions and level-headness in the forums in general, I also love your username in particular.

Wishing you would post more often, mere dust in comparison to your star, it's clear that I'm a fan boy.

 

[adrenalynn]

Thank you for the kind words!

I bring up the stereotypical weather (sounding) balloon because it's been a personal project of mine for a bit now. I hope to present the community with some compelling imagery next April, after we finish this entire system redesign. We'll be flying full 1080p HD video and full-frame 14-bit still cameras up into near-space. Our current images aren't really worth sharing in the way I'd like, but we've learned a ton about launching a near-space program! [need a black-eye-smiley here]

Anyway, I think the nearby ATC, FAA, and local media brace for the UFO phone calls every time we issue our NOTAM regarding an upcoming flight. We're considering a switch from red to blue or black for our flight capsules to try to cut down on the woo-woo-factor. With small binoculars, the capsule is clearly visible even crossing through the edge of the atmosphere if you know where and how to look, and we have several minutes on recovery where there's not enough atmosphere to fill the canopy so it's in free-flight - at that point the radar reflector is really banging around as it begins to find enough atmosphere to float, and starts really making a spectacle of itself in the right light. The reflector goes neutral a fair while before the canopy inflates.

[edit] And oh - I didn't mean to suggest that anyone in the thread was even leaning towards the woo-woo-definition of UFO. Just an example of how a weird spot of light can be observed zipping across the sky at 300+ knots and making "impossible" turns. And it's also worth noting that we fly under an exemption in FAR Part 101 that includes the requirement we fly in daylight and under < 5/10 cover. So we'd only be visible in the daytime. However, with proper additional limitations, avionics, and marking, we could fly extremely bright marking lights at night, which would just increase the confusion too.

 

[uberhund]

Yep. Thought so. I could tell that you had real world, practical experience with engineering and aerospace technologies. I like your idea of the black-eye smiley. Perhaps these could be issued as a sort of merit-badge reserved for those who have actually built and successfully flown something. Anything.

A few questions about your balloon project, if you're inclined to talk about it:

• 1) I am under the impression that changes in air pressures will damage many of the commercial, off-the-shelf components needed for a photography mission on the way up, and crush them altogether on the way back down to sea level pressures. If so, what advice might you have for amateurs (like me) wanting to attempt high altitude sounding and photography experiments?
  2) What of ice forming on lenses and other sensitive/moving parts. Heaters? But then, heaters take so much power.
  3) What telemetry technologies might you recommend for sending measurements and GPS positioning so the instrument package can be tracked and retrieved within the limited power budget available?

I have a few more questions, but I'm probably already at risk of getting this thread bumped to another forum.

 

[adrenalynn]

Wow - those are awesome questions, and so incredibly OT for this thread. I'm thinking I'll answer your questions via PM, and if anyone else is really interested, we can move to the appropriate place for a new thread. I was going to avoid the thread until I had something mind-blowing to show for it, then go all-out.

Just to note: I'm completely an amateur myself! Of course, "amateur" means "for the love of", so I guess in many ways - we all are.

 

[uberhund]

Excellent. I look forward to the PM, at your convenience.

 

[adrenalynn]

You've got gargantuan PM.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Actually, I'm probably going to split the discussion of adrenalynn's project into it's own thread anyway, as soon as I pick the best forum.

 

[3488]

Actually, I'm probably going to split the discussion of adrenalynn's project into it's own thread anyway, as soon as I pick the best forum.

How about Forces of Nature or SS&A?

It's far too good & intelligent to go into FS.

My tuppence worth.

Andrew Brown.

 

[adrenalynn]

I apologize, guys. It drifted more than it should have. I was originally just looking to illustrate an example that hadn't been considered - a near-cliche that is still accurate.

NOAA flies [I believe it's about] 75,000 sondes a year with reflectors like ours. 200 a day or more.

 

[BeckyBewildered]

Hi. I just joined Space.com so I could ask "WHAT IN - OR OUT OF - THE WORLD DID I JUST SEE???"

One of my mini-dachshunds got me up several times during the night (Sept 9, 2010) to go outside (not her habit at all), and while up at approx. 0445 MDT my eyes were drawn to a very odd, slowly-flashing and brilliant light directly overhead. I am 15 miles east of Westcliffe, and 35 miles west of Pueblo, Colorado, at 8,892 feet elevation, so the sky is exceptionally dark and clear. I am familiar with the way aircraft and satellites move, and which blink - satellites don't. This was slow enough that I could count approx. 9-10 seconds between single pulses. I was enjoying the meteor shower also going on, when I saw this "hovering" bright pin-point flash, located (as I stood) south of the Pleiades (sp?) and west of Orion. When I first observed it, it did not seem to be moving at all, but I went back to bed for a few minutes, then, curiosity piqued, went back out to see if it HAD moved - it seemed to be ever-soooooo-slowly moving northward. I went back to bed for a few more minutes, then checked on it again. At that point it was slightly more northward, but dimming as it pulsed. At 0507 MDT I looked again, but the object had vanished. I watched for several minutes, but it never reappeared. I have NEVER, in my 55 years of night-sky gazing, EVER seen anything like this. WHAT WAS IT??? As I stood there, I watched two satellites cross the sky, one of which made a momentary flare of light as it coursed overhead, then it too faded and vanished before it should have, as if someone turned it off right above me. Normally, I can follow satellites across most of the sky because it's so dark - no lights nearby - so this was unusual, too.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Both things are satellites. I often see satellite flashes, flares and brightness variations of all kinds during my meteor watches. Flash periods can range from seconds to minutes between flashes. Other sats get dimmer and brighter over a second or many seconds, and can be visible or invisible in between.
As far as the satellite fading out, you just watched it go into the earth's shadow (eclipse). Satellites can also appear "out of nowhere" when they come out of the shadow into sunlight.

Take a look at the Heavens-Above link in the Sateliite Observing Discussion thread. You can see that during the night many sats do not start or end at 10 degress above the horizon (where they start/end the times). All the ones that start at higher elevations are coming out of shadow, all the ones that end at higher elevations are going into shadow.
For example, out of the 67 satellites listed for my site this morning 18 start by coming out of shadow, and 20 end by going into shadow.

Meteor Wayne