Wait.... Stars dont move

I just thought i'd throw this out there maybe others have seen similar events, or know what i'm describing to be something other then a UFO

It was about 2 months ago, it was still quite warm out where i live, so a friend and i were swimming in my pool. I live in a nice sized town, so stars are sometimes hard to see. I should also note, that i live close to a very very small airport, so i, as well as my friend know what planes look like.

We were goofing around and he says to me "Did you see that!?" he explains to me that he's seen a shooting star. I groan in dissapointment that i had missed it.
A few minutes pass... "Oh my god!" "what what" i reply. he had seen yet another.
Now I know and trust this guy, i know he wouldnt lie to me, but this is hard to believe.
I'm getting flustered, so i keep my eyes glued to the sky.
I now see the 3rd shooting star, it appeared as a quick, small, blueish dash
Weird... 3 shooting stars, a meteor shower?... no
I keep looking around, and see the constilation, casiopea i shift my view down and to the left about 45 degrees and then i recognize another firmiliar constilation. (i dont recall the name sorry)
As i stare at it i notice that one of the stars has began to move. it is very very slow, but it is moving, i point it out to my friend and he too notices it.
Seconds later I notice another moving star. The first one's light begins to fade and disappears. And is soon followed by the 2nd star.
Later in the night my friend spotted 2 shooting stars, which appeared to be chasing after each other.

and thats what happened, my thoughts? i'm thinking Aliens, but its your choice to believe or not

Probably just satellites. You can see them moving across the sky on dark nights..pretty common actually once you know what to look for.

cool to see.

It could be a number of things. More than likely it was satellites as previously mentioned above. However, I'd keep my eyes peeled to the skies if I were you.

dont satilites like blink though?

Not usually. Satellites usually are just a point of light moving straight across the sky. What you are seeing is sunlight being reflected of their metal surfact...that's why you can see them more right after sunset, and not in the morning hours, as the sun has set to far to cause a reflection. Somtimes you may notice a blinking effect, caused by the satellite tumbling as it moves along, and if you're lucky, you might see an iridium sattelite, which is dim, but when the light hits the solar panels correctly, can creat an amazing brightenning effect.

Happy watching.

lets just assume for one second that what you believe you saw , ie " stars moving " actually happened

there are two [ actually there are multitudes ] flaws with this hypothosis

first , the distances involved - for a star to move sufficient distance for you to actually notice , would require it to traverse a mind boggling distance across space in seconds

second , if a celestial body was not in its published postion - the thousands of astronomers who monitor the skies every single night would notice instantly - and unlike you , record precicely the details of the star that moved , the time , its exact motion across the heavens etc etc .

does the fact that no one but you seems to have noticed [ or at least not mentioned ] this earth shattering event not strike you as odd ??

or are all astronomers members of a secret cabal of silence - upholding a vast conspiracy which only you have seen past . ?

there is of course the posibility that the earth moved - not the stars - but again should this improbable event happen - it would instantly be notice in errors in sun rise / sunset predictions - none of which were reported by anyone

i would suggest that you download a easy to use astronomy program like calsky and buy or loan from the libray a good primer book on astronomy for begginers - and start to learn more - watching the sky is a fascinating endeavour .

and its even more wonderous if you know what you are looking at - it is one of the rare instances where a little knowledge is benefucial .

good luck - and clear skies

thanks everyone, now i feel a bit silly
lol, but Ape, i was trying to imply that i thuoght it was not a star due to the fact that it was moving. I thuoght that it may be a UFO.

Well, I thought about not writing this but....

As others said it could be anything but the ships can pose as stars. I have seen the ships appear moving at the speed of an airplane with the lights an airplane would use then just drop then continue as before. They may do this drop two or three times until they get into the position they are to be. Usually when in position the light will turn more yellowish.

I WILL EVEN GO AS FAR TO SAY..... THEM THERE STARS UP THERE ARE NOT ALL STARS.
Sorry about the caps.

Lol
well, i thank you for posting that, now i dont feel insane. i still strongly believe what i saw was probably a ship, as it was stationary at first then it began moving.

Originally posted by SamRi890
Lol
well, i thank you for posting that, now i dont feel insane. i still strongly believe what i saw was probably a ship, as it was stationary at first then it began moving.

More likely a satellite, seriously.

One thing they didn't add but that also affects how we see things is the action of light in the air. Currents and temperatures can make things appear to move (this is why stars "twinkle") -- and unless you watched the object sitting still for about 5 minutes and then saw it move across half the sky (and were sure it was the same object) you may be mistaken about the amount of time that it didn't move.

Dude I am glad you brought this up.

I too have seen what you're talking about. I have seen tons of satellites out in the mojave desert. I know what some of you are thinking, but I know what satellites look like.

I live in los angeles. About 2 years ago in the summer, every wednesday night around 10pm I would see the same thing. when I was lucky enough to be staring straight up ( I was usually lounging in the families old Jacuzzi)

At first glance I thought hey look a satellite, then I started thinking. Wait it's a satellite visible over LA in the smoggy summer time? No way. so I would watch these things with interest. They were the size of small dim to modest stars. Same whitish electric blue color. BUT, they would travel always alone, from the western horizon from over the pacific, directly over LA and to the east towords Edwards AF Base.

The objects were visable a few weeks then stopped.

They would travel from horizon to horizon in about 1 minute. Frequently the light would just wink out and then reappear suddenly much further along on it's course. Would jump from one horizon to over head and continue on it's course. Always a steady light, no blinking or anything.

Frequently when doing this sudden disappear/reappear way too quickly act somewhere way further down it's course the light would create a bright blue streak of light when it would reappear. The streak would then suddenly stop as quickly as it appeared and continue to be a dot moving through the sky. The streaks were about two fingers wide (hold you hand out at arms length like you are pointing to something-the distance would be the quivelent of sky blocked out by your index and pointing finger placed together pointing at something) and lasted much less than a second in duration. More like a quarter of a second.

I had my girlfriend at the time witness it too,although it took her a while to spot the light. because they don't stick out from the background of stars too much.

One time I observed the same light doing it's stunts but this time it was making a gentle slalom like manuver. At the apex of each slalom a very faint but visable jet of sparks of the same color of the object would burst out. Again very faintly and very gently. Theses 'sparks' would not travel too far from the light and didn't seem to explode outward with much force more like a fountain.

Sometimes I would be lucky enough on maybe two occasions to see the same light traveling back out to the west in an apparent revers course of it's previous path. This would happen around midnight or two hours later. One time I saw the same phenomina traveling from north to south. Once it got directly overhead or right above the city the light would streak in a eastern direction, again towords the mojave desert and dissapear.

Don't know if it's ET or Govt. in nature but it definantly wasn't an airplane-see plenty of those over LA, and not a satellite although initialy similar in appearance. I could speculate that they were UFO's very , very high up in the atmosphere, or maybe smaller orb like ones closer to the ground, the objects seemed like they were very high up but again who really could tell.

I know that the air force uses LA as a landmark for spy planes to orientate themselfs with when coming and going over the pacific coast. At high speeds you need large beacons like LA to turn in time. Could be something going on with what the author of this thread saw, Maybe way too soon to dismiss as a satellite.

Then according to what you think you saw, I then have seen thousands of "ships".

Most likely satellites.

And you aren't insane. The insane one has already posted on this thread.



[edit on 8-11-2006 by T_Nexis]

Some satellites appear to dim then brighten or flash but it's caused by their rotation and the sun striking them as they rotate. Satellites allways go in a straignt line. Question ?? what direction do the satellites go and why. South to north and why or why west to east. Any special reason for their direction??

mikell

Dude satellites don't jump across the sky or slalom from side to side. i know what satellites look like. Ive seen plenty of them.

These were not satellites. Thats what got my attention to them in the first place. At first glance they looked like satellites but then began to act very differently.
Satellites do go from horizon to horizon pretty quickly. they do appear to wink out and then reappear further along their course a few moments later. These were doing much more than that.

I think people have missunderstood what i ment when I said that they suddenly dissapear and reappear in the sky. What I mean is they would disappear say near the horizon and reappear literally a second later directly overhead. They moved in these jumps much ,much, alot much faster than the satellite would have been. They cover so much distance when they do this it's even faster than could be accountable for it's own speed before it jumps. Satellites don't acellerate several thousand miles an hour in less than a second and jump across the sky. And they don't leave bright blue streaks, and they don't send off cascades of sparks while slaloming.

Besides how on earth am I going to see a satellite inside the heart of Los Angeles? You can barely see the orion constellation due to the smog, pollution which is visable even at night, and the 487square miles of high pressure sodium bulbs illuminating the night sky like a flare. If you were in times square new york and stared straight up do you really think you would be able to see a satellite.

i did not see a satellite.

Satellites can blink in and out, but they move in a straight line and at the same speed. The LEO (low earth orbiting) satellites can appear very bright. Sometimes you can also see the space station cross the sky which looks just like a satellite from our point of view.

However, I've seen lights in the sky do some crazy manuvers... things no currently identified aircraft or spacecraft of ours can do. What sits still, shoots off in one direction, stops, then shoots off in another direction?

Sometimes you just gotta see to believe.

Originally posted by mikellmikell
Some satellites appear to dim then brighten or flash but it's caused by their rotation and the sun striking them as they rotate. Satellites allways go in a straignt line. Question ?? what direction do the satellites go and why. South to north and why or why west to east. Any special reason for their direction??

Most satellites are launched to make use of the earths rotatation, from west to east, the earth is spinning at 0.4 km/sec so it doesn't take as much to reach orbital velocity of 8km/sec the exception are polar orbits.
So SamRi890 which direction were they moving in?
Also I live on the outskirts of a large city I can only see the brightest of stars even in the best conditions I haven't a hope in hell of seeing any satelites, I have seen them before in other places though. If they were satellites you should be able to catch them again, keep looking.

About 15 years ago my buddy and I were fishing, perfect sky, around this time of year in fact, because I've always been attracted to Orion. I was looking at the stars, looking at a triangle of stars close to Orion, when out of one of the stars, came two other stars that just took off and vanished. My buddy says "there they go" as if he knew. What was weird, is a huge sky, and we both were looking at the same area to see this.

So, for one thing, there were two of them, going away from the star in a V, not going in the same line. So, to answer your question, in my case, yes, stars move, I guess if they want to that is.

I'm no longer surprised when I see things, hear about things, etc. About two weeks ago, I tracked an Orb in the sky for the better part of 30 minutes, then it vanished. I had thought that it was a daytime star, until, well, it decided to start moving ;-)

Happy sky watching, as I'm inclined to believe that it just may be watching back ;-)

Originally posted by Kruel
Satellites can blink in and out, but they move in a straight line and at the same speed. The LEO (low earth orbiting) satellites can appear very bright. Sometimes you can also see the space station cross the sky which looks just like a satellite from our point of view.

However, I've seen lights in the sky do some crazy manuvers... things no currently identified aircraft or spacecraft of ours can do. What sits still, shoots off in one direction, stops, then shoots off in another direction?

Sometimes you just gotta see to believe.

Not all satellites move in a straight line, you can have a look at Astronomy forums where people are wondering what they are, some satellites do some crazy man overs, track back on themselves, change direction by 90 degrees, etc.

Not all satellites move in a straight line, you can have a look at Astronomy forums where people are wondering what they are, some satellites do some crazy man overs, track back on themselves, change direction by 90 degrees, etc.

Whatever is being discussed on these "astronomy forums" that you are referring to, I can assure you that they aren't satellites. If an object in the sky moves at a steady speed from one horizon to the other without changing direction (and doesn't have blinking lights), then it is almost certainly a satellite. If it stops, changes direction, bounces up and down, or takes part in a night sky line dancing competition, then it is NOT a satellite !!!

I remember something like this happening to me aswell, it was summer, i was out side. And i just randomly look up at the sky ( as i usually do ) and i saw 4 orange lights, in a diamond formation, moving slowly to the north (i live in australia btw) then one of the lights on the bottom of the formation slowed down, it was almost at a complete stop, when it sped up to join the other 3 lights, do satelittes do that normally?