Strange star activity

[ownjoouk]

I was just walking my dog and as I was walking I noticed a bright light in the sky.

My first thought was - Is that Venus? That's unusual for now (please bare in mind my sky knowledge is minimal but I know basic stuff).

Anyway it was BRIGHT. And then suddenly it dulled out until the star visible was pin [removed word].

I was a bit weird and I was wondering if I had really just seen it when the last star in Ursa Major also lit up really bright!!

I popped out my Sky Maps app on my phone and can confirm it was "Dubhe".

I stopped walking to see if any others would suddenly light up but they didn't.

Can anybody "shed any light" pardon the pun, on what I just saw? Or did anyone else see it?

[Capricorn]

Where are you?

What time did it happen?

Which direction were you looking when you saw it?

Sounds like an Iridium flare, although there are others that flare, just lost the like to the site that gave the others.

[ownjoouk]

Sorry i should have already said that - my bad.

I'm in Blackpool, it was around 8.30 ish and I was looking north, possibly more north westish maybe NWW.

I've seen Iridiums before this wasn't an Iridium. It was more like the individual stars were flaring up.

Was very strange.

[Capricorn]

There was one at 8:20 for you, but looking NNE not Westish.

It was a bright one as well and would have caught your attention I suspect.

I know there are others, that are not so well known and not as bright.

May be daft but any chance of a helicoptor simply turning?

They have big forward facing lights, only mention this as on my trips in to work I have seen a few and I also pass Stansted airport, the lights on aircraft can be seen as "stars" several miles away, and as they turn to approach they appear and disappear.

[ownjoouk]

Definitely not a chopper.

I spent some time doing a write up pointing out common things in the sky that people confuse as a "UFO" (Chinese Lanterns and such).

It was definitely something I've not seen happen before, and wasn't geese, aircraft, iridiums, comets etc....

I'll just chalk it down to one of the many weird and wonderful things I've seen in the night sky - and may they continue!!

[Mr Q]

Another possibility is that a small faint cloud passed by the bright star and as you looked up, the star brightened to its normal magnitude. This of course assumes that the star stayed bright after. With your U.K. skies never really getting dark till the middle of winter, this "cloud" would have been hard to see against the not so dark sky but opaque enough to block out most of the stars normally bright light. I have seen this phenomena several times and another version is when a jet contrail passes in front of a bright star and greatly dims it for a few seconds. With the Moon not out, the contrail is nearly impossible to detect. Hope this offers some possible explanations to what you saw.

[Ganymede12]

Sounds a lot like an iridium flare to me. They are quite spectacular!