Another "What is this?"

Five years ago I was outside having a smoke and gazing at the stars, as we do, when I noticed a really bright star in the sky. It was about 10.30pm and the light was flashing on every 15 seconds. It was visible for about 2 seconds then disappear for 15 seconds.

I called my husband out and we watched it for about 45 minutes until our necks couldn't take it anymore.

It was brighter than any star I have ever seen. It was moving very slowing in the sky. It was definitely in space and not something in our atmosphere. It was too slow to be a satellite (I have seen many before). It wasn't a plane, a shooting star, a weather balloon. It was white and not any other colours showed. No it was not Mars or Venus.

The only explanation we could come up with was that perhaps it was the space station.

The next day I contacted the local observatory and they said they had not seen anything but they do not search the whole sky every night anyway.

Does anyone have any idea what it might have been???



[Edited on 22-11-2003 by Jubilee]

could have been some sort of a military X plane (test flights), could have been some meteor dust in space reflecting light, or theres allways the posibility of aliens...

Jubilee, I think the most likely explanation is that you saw a satellite that was rotating and every 15 seconds would reflect the suns light, hence the flashing. As far as I know, not all satellites orbit the earth at the same speed.

Anyway, you can go to this site to see when the ISS is scheduled to pass over the sky in your area.

spaceflight.nasa.gov...

Just select the closest city and it should give you dates and times on when you can see it.

sounds like it could be a variety of different things. as kraken said it was probably just a satellite.