Please tell me what this might have been

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etavaunt

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Last night, I went outside, and saw a star (Star?) that was WAY bigger than normal, with Binocs I could detect a shape. <br />I watched it for one hour. It stayed fixed with the other stars, i.e. it moved across the sky with them exactly so. (I know enough lay-man astronomy to know it wasn't any of the planets, I know them by sight and see them all the time when I am out fishing, so it wasn't one of them )<br /><br />It was rainbow coloured. It had rays shooting from it for all the world like the depiction of the star of Bethlehem in a book. <br /><br />It would suddenly grow in brightness, when I saw it initially it was as bright as Jupiter ever gets, brighter I am thinking. When it waxed in brightness, the rays coming out like the points of a compass, would flash like I don't know what. I showed two housemates and a neighbour and none of us had ever seen anything like it before. <br /><br />It was literally all the colours of the rainbow. In the field of the binocs it lost the rays, but instead became almost a discernable shape, which I guessed at being an oval. And first one side of the oval would be florensent green while the top was red and another side sickly yellow, then before you could be sure the colours were exactly so, they would shift like oil-on-water colours shift. <br /><br />OK. It was at 11 pm, in Auckland. The object was in the sky about 55 degrees from the horizon. It was in the east near where the sun comes over the hill, maybe it was about my hands width at arms length south of the track that the planets are following at this time of the year. <br />This is not where Geosynchronous satellites that I have had pointed out to me, sit. As far as I could see, it couldn't be a sat sitting there. <br /><br />Was it anything anyone else recognises? <br /><br />What could that have been?. I guess it might have been a satellite after all because, after all, why wouldn't something else turning up there, be reported here already in excitement.<br /><br />Now, I HAD been d
 
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qso1

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Sounds like a pretty close description of the star Sirius, depending on what you mean by way bigger than normal. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>
 
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MeteorWayne

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The flashing and color changing is caused by the refraction of the bright starlight by small air parcels in the atmosphere.<br />It's very common for the brightest stars.<br /><br />Sirius was only about 30 degrees elevation at that hour, but of course is the brightest star in the sky. It was at 90 degrees (due east), just to the right of Orion. (about than 1 Orion body length)<br /><br />Another possibility would be Canopus, which was 50 degrees elevation, in the ESE (120 degrees azimuth), the second brightest star in the sky, but it would be less likely to be doing the flickering/changing color thing at that elevation. Canopus is about 3 times further away from Orion. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>
 
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shadow735

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wasnt there a recent supernova? Or has that already faded? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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etavaunt

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Thanks for answering you guys. You know I am sure that I am in Auckland New Zealand?. Southern Hemisphere?.<br /><br /> I am quite sure it wasn't a star that normally occurs there. This is the back step of our house, we often sit there of a night drinking beer amd looking up at the stars over Mount Wellington (Which our house backs onto the side of. We only see black mountainside up to 45 degrees from the horizon) waiting for meteories to clip over the top.<br /><br />We sit and talk about the various planets that the different time of year has in that part of the sky above the Mt.<br /><br />Through the binocs (Sadly only a small pair so I couldn't fix it well enough to get more than a suggestion of a shape and the colours were clearer than by naked eye)it was three times the size and brightness of the other stars around it.<br /><br />Is it possibly that, because it was close to the APPARENT horizon that the mountain top provides, there was a sort of Ponzi effect?.<br />If that is so, why wasn't this same effect noticed before?.<br /><br />I mean, when I called people to come look, the very second they walked out the door that they have walked out a thousand times, they said "Far out, what in the world is that?".<br /><br />I looked last night, but it was overcast.<br /><br />I was thinking , with a thing so far out of the usual, you guys were going to say "Oh yes, that is that comet that made like a gas cloud tony", or "One of the Irridium Sats tony" something.<br />I wish you could have seen it. <img src="/images/icons/frown.gif" /> <br /><br />If it was Sirius, Sirius was trying to tell me something, and was concentrating on me. Because I seen him before (Not from memory near a hoziron though) and him not so bright as all that.
 
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MeteorWayne

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I know you don't want to believe us, but we are correct it was Sirius or Canopus. Yes I looked up your location and time, which is why I gave the directions to Sirius and Canopus that I did.<br /><br />They're much different angles from "upover" <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />A small pair of binocs?<br />Were the eyepieces individually adjustable?<br /><br />Did you fine tune them on a dimmer star?<br /><br />It's easy to have the two eyepieces focused differently, so anything will be fuzzy. Of course, the brighter the star, the fuzzier it will be (since you can see brighter fuzzy stuff)<br /><br />The multitude of colors is unmistakeble with a bright star shining through a lot of atmosphere.<br />If it was near the mountain top, I'd guess it was more like the 30 degrees elevation of Sirius, rather than Canopus at 50 degrees.<br /><br />Unless you have a lot of experience, estimating altitude is one with the largest errors.<br /><br />If your friends never look at the sky, they would be stunned by Sirius when it's in full flicker.<br /><br />See the Red/Green flashing object threads, all dozen or 30 or them <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />You've got to trust me here <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> , I wouldn't mislead you. Not my style.<br /><br />Do you know Orion? If so, by extrapolating from it's position, it will become clear which of the two stars it was.<br /><br />On a calm night, Sirius is just a bright star.<br />When the atmosphere is roiling, it's a UFO !! <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>
 
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etavaunt

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OK. and once you add in a variable such as "When the atmosphere is roiling" I can accept that.<br /><br />We are right under the mountain, literally like being beside a wall. I will go bank on it being far closer to 50 than 30 mate. I have some small technical training in life, Please to forgive a tailor sticking to his last. I said 55 degrees, and you give me a target at 50, I am content with my accuracy thank you. <br /><br />We all of us sit right there, and look at the sky, while they smoke and I mutter about filthy smokers and we have a little bit of supper to give us something to wash down. So, no, none of us are new to looking at the stars, and none of us ever saw a star do that.<br /><br />Man, all my life I have peered at the things, while fishing, sailing, and I never would have believed that any star could have done that light show.<br /><br />Learn something everyday, eh?.<br /><br />(A small pair of binocs? <br />Were the eyepieces individually adjustable? <br /><br />Did you fine tune them on a dimmer star?)<br /><br />Stares at MeteorWayne. . . ."Do you bite your thumb at me, Sir?".<br /><br />Lol <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /><br />
 
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