Seen a swift/very swift moving light (colored or white) in the sky? - *Please Read this first*

Hi I am new to this forum but just wanted to get some opinions or see if anyone else has seen what I am about to describe. First of all I am not saying it was aliens there could very well be a good explanation but the other night my husband and I were outside looking at the moon and some other objects with his big telescope. All of a sudden he kinda freaked out cause he said something just flew by the object he was looking at. My first thought was a shooting star or something on that order. Then I looked around and with out the telescope I saw the same thing...it just looked like two little white dots moving across the sky, they were NOT in our atmosphere and two of them just kinda crossed each other going straight. I kept my eye on one of them and all of a sudden it just stopped. My husband said the one he was watching all of a sudden changed courses really quick. I watched the one I saw for awhile but it never moved after that and finally we had to go inside. We have not seen it since then. I am not sure if we really saw something bizarre or if it could be satellites or another explanation? It was just strange since we saw 3 of them and how they reacted. It was in the west when I saw them but they shot across the sky also to the south. Any ideas?

reply to post by dragonfire117



Thanks for sharing your observations dragonfire. Sorry that I did not see your reply before, and reply to it.

I think more likely than not, what you saw was of military/aircraft in nature. We know that a light in the sky can often confuse the mind and fool you into misjudging things like distance altitude and speed. Things that are relatively "normal" can seem unreal, as I know from my own experience.

- Witnesses who offer very specific information about altitude, airspeeds, or maneuvers must be viewed with caution, since even eyewitnesses with aeronautical experience have difficulty with these estimates.

USAF Witness Interview Guidelines

reply to post by scar7


I think it's amazing that we don't get hit with more stuff, given how much there is floating around in the solar system... but it is a very big place, and we have much larger gravitational wells than ourselves, like the Sun and Jupiter, which hoover up many objects and material that might otherwise come close to Earth.

I also agree, nature is beautiful

reply to post by JanieB


Hi and welcome to the forum JanieB,

Just as with naked eye observing, when you look through a telescope with adequate light gathering ability, you will see meteors and satellites. With a telescope you can also detect meteors and satellites that you could not be able to see with the naked eye. Telescopic meteors as they are known are actually more common than "naked eye meteors", but from your description, it sounds like the objects were long lasting and relatively slow moving, which makes me think it's likely that you saw satellites. How long were you able to observe these objects for?

As I wrote a couple of posts above, it's actually quite easy to get it wrong when it comes to judging the distance of an unknown object in the night sky, and it's also possible for observers (even experienced observers) to see things (like maneuvers) that are not there.

The only way to overcome this is to make a record of the event, and then it can be analyzed for clues. Without this, there is no way to say for sure. Even if you can only get a short (5-10 second) still exposure using a camera on a fixed tripod, any satellite tracks captured on an exposure could be identified providing your camera time is accurately set (to the nearest second) or you note down the time of the exposure. A fast normal-wide angle lens on a tripod mounted DSLR is ideal for this. It can be done on a tight budget if necessary.