flashing lights in sky

[sixtitz]

Just wondering if someone could tell me what i keep seeing. I just moved to arizona and have never seen this before. On 2 different occasions at 2am I was outside and noticed up in the sky among the stars was this light that kept changing from white to blue to red. It was stationary. I watched it for a good 10 mins to make sure it wasn't moving before waking my husband to come out and look at it. He angrily walked out side and looked up and said its a police helicopter then went back to bed. So I watched it for another 30 mins and still no movement, except for the flashing. I believed it to be higher then a helicopter would go, but ok what else is it. Now tonight i was out again at 2am and there it was again in the same place. Is this a satalite? Some airforce training? Anyone know anything I really would appreciate some feed back.<br />Thank you so much.

 

[vogon13]

Davis Monthan Air Force base has a few helicopters, don't be surprised if it was a military helo.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[igorsboss]

If it moves as the rest of the stars move, slowly across the sky, then it was a star. The only thing left to explain is why the color changed.<br /><br />This is probably an artifact of the atmosphere, where the star light is refracted to create the various colors. This is probably from passing ice crystals in the upper atmosphere.

 

[CalliArcale]

How high in the sky was the object? Stars closer to the horizon are more prone to twinkling due to atmospheric distortion because their light passes through more air to get to your eye than stars near the zenith. Bright stars are especially dramatic, changing in brightness and even color.<br /><br />Being visible in the same spot at the same time suggests a bright star to me. I pulled a map for Yuma, AZ at 2AM on 10/7/05. Now, I seem to recall Arizona doesn't observe Daylight Standard Time, so that should be 09:00 UTC. Several very bright stars were near the horizon, most notably Vega in the west and Sirius in the east. These two stars are notorious for twinkling. I would bet that if you saw something in the eastern or western sky, it was one of these stars. <br /><br />EDIT: As a point of interest, Saturn was rising in the east and Mars was near the zenith. Planets can also twinkle, so you may also have seen Saturn twinkling. Mars can twinkle, but twinkling is much less common near the zenith, especially in the nice dry desert air of Arizona. Arizona is very popular among astronomers because of the relatively clear air. Mars will, however, appear faintly reddish which is kinda cool. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

Thanks for knowledgable reply.

 

[sixtitz]

Thank you very much for your reply. First of all I would like to say excuse my ignorance, because I can't give you degrees of where exactly it is but i can say that it is in the west and I believe that if the little dipper is handle pointing down then it is below the little dipper. To be more detailed on the star itself I would say that the red glow is at the top of it where as the blue is a distinct twinkle through out the rest of it. <br /><br />I love watching the stars I just wish I knew more about them. I am from Chicago and you couldn't see much there, but here in Arizona the sky is amazing. Thanks again.

 

[CalliArcale]

Sounds like Vega, then. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> It's one of the brightest things in the sky.<br /><br />If you want to be sure it's a "fixed star" and not something else, look for it several times during the night. It will probably twinkle the most near the horizon, but if it's really Vega, it will move through the sky at the same rate as all the other fixed stars around it. A good reference is the nearby constellation Cygnus (the Northern Cross), which the ancient Greeks described as a swan flying along the Milky Way (which they thought to be a river). Cygnus is one of the easier constellations to spot once you've seen it. Albireo is the head of the swan, Deneb is its tail, two stars mark the tips of its wings, and a fifth star marks its body. (If you see it as a cross, it is a little bit lopsided, but the fifth star forms the point where the two bars of a cross meet.) If you picture Cygnus flying straight downwards (or the cross rightside up, like a lower-case t ), then Vega is to the right and up a bit from Albireo. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>