I saw a star moving...?

Well I think it's safe to say that what we are seeing are UFO's. Meaning unidentified flying object. Not aliens. Well maybe but who knows. They are definitely not satellites, but hopefully one day soon we will learn what is REALLY happening just off of our little "Pale Blue Dot".

Originally posted by PlanetaryDuality
They are definitely not satellites.

Prove it.

Second line.

regarding CHUD's thread description here chud thread previously posted
While I concede that this is quite possible considering the amount of objects in orbit around the earth, when I saw this there was no flickering, flashing or fading out and fading in again, which I've seen plenty of satellites do. At all times the dot of light was steady and consistent.
It'd be an interesting exercise to calculate based on your location and angle of viewing (in my case almost straight up) and time what the chances of the above description actually occurring since it does seem quite plausible.

reply to post by mobtek


Laser light sites, as I posted earlier. There are a lot of people out there, some rich beyond comprehension with free time on their hands. Look at all the boats docked at exclusive spots around the world, there are a lot of educated 'fortunate' people that don't have to work for a living out there.

I cant believe how many have seen this.

I also can't believe the same brainless replies from the skeptic robots; can't be ufo, must be satellite or your minds.

Unless the satellites have come alive and are playing laser tag I think they can be ruled out.

Originally posted by mobtek
when I saw this there was no flickering, flashing or fading out and fading in again, which I've seen plenty of satellites do. At all times the dot of light was steady and consistent.

Satellites can do both. In general, satellites remain relatively constant in brightness. But most satellites can also "flare" from time to time - how often depends on the design of the satellite and how its being operated (orbit/rotation?).

On top of that, there is also junk (usually fainter than a normal satellite), and defunct satellites. In some cases they randomly tumbling. Some tumble fast, and some slow, creating flashes which can be short or prolonged.

In short, satellites can vary in their behavior.

I think what a lot of people forget (or don't realize) as you mentioned, is just how many satellites (including junk) there are in orbit, and the vast majority of it is usually very faint, so even under a very dark sky, you might not notice it, until it flares or glints.

For example. If you can clearly make out the milky way in your sky, you should be able to visibly track most satellites (providing they are not in earth's shadow of course), down to about +5 or +6 magnitude. Small pieces of junk however could be as faint as +7 (or more), which is at the threshold of visibility, and then only visible under clear and absolutely light-pollution free skies, but when they glint or flare, they can increase in brightness by a few hundred times in some cases.

Originally posted by mobtek
It'd be an interesting exercise to calculate based on your location and angle of viewing (in my case almost straight up) and time what the chances of the above description actually occurring since it does seem quite plausible.

I'd also be interested to know exactly the chances.

What I can say, from my own experience of photographing the night sky, is that when it's possible to view satellites (during summer at mid northern latitudes this is throughout the night, but at this time of the year, due to earth's tilt/the sun dropping very low below the horizon, only for the first hour or so after sunset, and the first hour before sunrise), it's rare for me to take a photograph and not have at least one or two satellites on it.

My guess would be at least one or two times on a clear night from any given location.

But, I think we have to keep in mind that, although the chances of you personally seeing what you saw if you only look at the sky for perhaps an hour or two in total per year, are probably not that bad, with millions of other people around the world, there are always going to be people seeing the same phenomena.

The point is, you just need to be looking up at the right time, which is down to luck.

I'd like to make a couple of further points as well if I may...

We know from the posts on here that many people see these "phenomena". I do myself from time to time, and so do many others, including other astronomers and astro-photographers like myself. So we know it's not "that" unusual.

Well if that is the case, why is there no footage, or even a "still" long exposure photograph that shows anything unusual like this? We all look at/photograph basically the same sky, so there should be.

This, IMO, is easily accounted for by the fact that astronomers have long been aware of the causes (as I pointed out in an earlier post).

I also said this is testable, and I'd be more than willing to help anyone out who wants to try.

If people here really want to get to the bottom of this particular phenomena, the proper way to do it is to eliminate possible causes, one by one. The easiest way to do that (that I can see), is with a camera.

I haven't seen anyone else come up with a viable explanation for objects that resemble satellites appearing to make sharp turns, and a camera could settle the case... or perhaps catch something that raises more questions, who knows! but at least we would have some physical evidence, together with an eye witness report... it's got to be better that a bunch of people sitting around, patting themselves on the back, and saying "wow, all of us have seen something we can't explain".

Thanks anyway for agreeing that my explanation is plausible, and for taking the time to look at it. Sorry if what I type comes off a bit "rant-like". That's not my intention. I just think that at least some people here are overlooking/dismissing a possibility because what they saw before does not exactly match what they saw on one particular occasion, and how they expect satellites to be able to behave.

By the way, there is another related expectation for a satellite appearing to make a sharp turn which I posted in another thread some time ago, which might explain some peoples "sightings".

Originally posted by Illustronic
Laser light sites, as I posted earlier. There are a lot of people out there, some rich beyond comprehension with free time on their hands. Look at all the boats docked at exclusive spots around the world, there are a lot of educated 'fortunate' people that don't have to work for a living out there.

I agree, that might also be a plausible explanation for some unusual reports. I'm not convinced though that lasers would explain any of those posted in this thread.

For starters, white light lasers are not that common, and I would have a hard time believing that there are significant numbers of people out there waving them about in the sky. Secondly, what would a white light laser pointed up at a clear sky look like?

I wouldn't like to make any assumptions, but as the owner of various red and green lasers, I can't see how how a laser could produce a star like dot on a clear sky, and the beam not be obvious or visible. That's just my opinion though.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.

The easiest way to do that (that I can see), is with a camera.

I remember trying to get a good photo of the moon, not easy.

Here is a link to some photos from a recent c2c show. Shows a stationary field of stars in the background.

colored light thing time exposure

In bright daylight I saw 2 bright objects the size of stars behaving very erratically.

This was around September of 2004 in the Dallas/Fort Worth area around 1300 (1:00 PM) CDT. Weather at the time was clear, no clouds.

I was taking a walk and as is normal for me I looked to the sky often. Living near DFW airport I enjoyed observing aircraft overhead. Well this day I was looking up and saw a bright, star sized object that appeared stationary.
I was very intrigued so I kept my eye on it. It was very difficult to see. If my eyes lost sight of it, I had to really focus to find it again. I was very lucky to have spotted it in the first place.

As I watched this object another object appeared. By appeared I mean it just was there where there was nothing there previously. So now I was very very intrigued. The 2nd object was identical in looks as the 1st object.

The first object still appeared stationary; however, the second object moved. I'll try to describe what I saw.

Picture a quarter sized circle (about an inch in circumference) . The first object was at the center of the circle. The second object stayed mostly on the outside edge of the circle. It's movement was travel around the edge of the circle at various distances, meaning it would go 90 degrees and back, 180 degrees and back, all the way around etc. It did more than just travel along the edge of the circle however. As it was doing it's random circling it also moved in and out relative to the first object which still appeared stationary. It would leave it's orbit and move in closer to the first object then back out all the while still circling. All this in a random manner.

The speed was not too fast and it was steady. I noticed no change of speed of the circling object.

After watching this for approximately 25 minutes both objects began fading. They were originally as bright as stars (or brighter as I had seen them in bright sunlight). They slowly faded out until they both were gone.

No idea but it's definitely a memory that is as clear as it had just happened yesterday. Unfortunately I did not have a camera as I wasn't expecting to see anything weird. And even if I had had a camera, it would have been worthless because of the size and how difficult it was to see with a naked eye. Perhaps a very very very good camera may have been able to pick up something I don't know, but not anything a "normal" person would have.

No idea what this was, I wanted to share my "moving star" story.

reply to post by againuntodust


what was the location of this sighting?

while i was on holiday in turkey just over a year ago i seen the EXACT same thing!!!
exactly how you described it, my girlfriends sister thought she seen a "star" movin
but when she looked again she couldnt find it, i was keepin my eyes to the sky
and after a few minutes a "star" started movin slowly to the right, then almost instantly
moved back to where it started in a kinda half circle, then it would move in the other direction,
but the speed was almost instant when it was movin in circles or half circles,
i also seen a few satelittes the same night but none moved anything like this.

Originally posted by kawika
I remember trying to get a good photo of the moon, not easy.

That is true. The moon is easy to mess up, if you don't know what you are doing. Especially getting the exposure right. You also need a good steady tripod plus a way to trigger your camera without moving it.

In some ways, getting good pictures of stars (if you get the stars right, satellite and meteor trails will also come out right) is not quite as hard, since you don't need to worry about exposure as much as with the moon. It's almost impossible to over expose the stars.

The real problem is getting accurate focus, but there are ways. I use a laptop to focus my cameras. It takes a few minutes, but it's very easy to do once you know how. I'll be happy to explain how it's done if anyone wants.

It's also possible to run into problems with light pollution, which make a dark background sky look light if you expose for too long when there is light pollution present. You want to keep the background reasonably dark, otherwise faint satellite trails will be lost in the "washed-out" background, and you control this by varying the length of your exposure.

Originally posted by kawika
Here is a link to some photos from a recent c2c show. Shows a stationary field of stars in the background.

colored light thing time exposure

I've seen this before. It's a misleading image, if you don't know what is going on...

This is what you get when you take a long exposure of a scintillating star.

Have you ever seen a star "twinkling" and "flashing" various colors before? That is due to turbulence in our atmosphere, separating out the various colors, a bit like a rainbow does. As I'm sure you know, white light is made up of many different colors.

If you take a very short exposure of a scintillating star (Sirius is a very good example), or a series of them, this is what you will see:


Source: Astro Bob

Now if you take a long exposure and move the camera (or allow earths rotation to move the camera, as in the case below), you get something like this:


Source: Sirius scintillation

This APOD of Sirius is one of my favorites:



Take that one step further, and try to hand-hold a long exposure of a scintillating star like Sirius, you get the squiggle effect we are seeing in the image you posted.

You mentioned "a stationary field of stars in the background", but I can only make out one "star", and "longish" (it can be as low as 1 second) exposures, are often prone to "hot" or "stuck" pixels, which can resemble stars:


Source: Canon 7D Hot Pixels

Hot or stuck pixels can be a real problem on dark/under-exposed backgrounds for astro-photographers in particular. We do have methods (eg "dark frame subtraction") to combat image artifacts like hot pixels.

A few more links here:
Hot Pixels
Hot Pixels
Orange Moon with Hot Pixel

chud thanks for this description here chuds other other post

I'm leaning to this explanation for my '94 sighting as it showed no other errant behaviour
I'm still itching to calculate the odds of seeing his hehe

cheers mob

reply to post by mobtek


Glad I could help mob.

If you can remember what the time of your sighting was, it should be possible to work out the position of earth's shadow, and therefore if explanation fits.

My first thought is that there must be some software out there that can work it out. I'll see if I can find anything that fits the bill.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


first learn how to spell
and i could do a second
but i would be wasting my time
but have u ever seen a sattelite shoot off
2nd
######

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


sometime in Jan/Feb '94? Remember this was 18 years ago now

at coords
Lat
35 15' 14.61" S
Long
149 4' 9.55" E

It's probably just Jesus looking for a place to park.
Too much junk in the orbit.

hmm very interesting, yes it seems to be in the gray right now. next time flim it, and make sure its on a tripod, because if it is moving slowly then having a camera that isnt super still wont help you at all.. Also if the light is starting in the same place at a certain time around each night then i believe its a satellite, but then it doesnt give a reason why it is moving is different directions... hmm well try the camera thing for it and record it each night and get back to us with you findings

I saw a very far away star move as well about a week ago. At the time I was excited that I might actually have something to post about, but im pretty sure it was just a satellight because it just kept going straight until it was gone. Im thinking its easier to see them this time of year because it is colder; and air molecules vibrate less like they do when its hot outside.

Originally posted by SloAnPainful
Well with mine my wife, my three buddies and I all seen it at the same time...So optical illusion is kind of out of the question.

Why?

Television (or film) is an optical illusion. If you, your wife and your buddies all sat round the TV to watch it, would you not all experience the illusion? Do all of you perceive films as a series of non-moving images?

How is this any different?

Originally posted by mobtek
reply to post by C.H.U.D.

 

sometime in Jan/Feb '94? Remember this was 18 years ago now

Unfortunately, we would need a fairly accurate date and time to say anything with reasonable certainty.