Satellite?

[epaddict]

Last night I was doing some lunar viewning with my dob when I saw a small dot of light going North/South, I locked onto it and followed it for several minutes. The crazy thing about this was; I was looking at the moon through the trees in my front yard, it's not a very big opening and I can only observe the moon for about 45 minutes before it's gone. As the moon was slipping behind the giant redwood trees, I spotted the small dot moving slowly. It took 12 seconds for the image to go from one edge of my view to the other, I was using a 30mm ES 80 degree ep. As I was watching, a normal satellite whizzed through my view but this little dot of light just meandered along, I watched it for about 8 minutes. A  few hours later I saw another one at another set up location. Again, I'm scratching my head as to what this could be? It wasn't visible to the naked eye and if I had to make a bet on it, I would say it was a deep space object. I've tracked satelites many times with my dob and it's a real chore to keep up but this was going so slow that I was able to have my daughter come over and take a look at it without losing it. I hope someone can shed some light on this one.   

[Stu]

I suspect it was a geostationary satellite. I just had a look on GoSatWatch, and found and example which would fit (I'm not saying this was the one you saw).

Eutelsat 16c is geostationary but seems to follow a localised orbit of some sort which takes it on a North/South path. Seems to fit?

[epaddict]

If this was a satellite, how could it be this slow. I mean...a satellite went through my field of view as I was watching this and it went by so fast that I barely got a glimpse of it. This object took twelve seconds just to go through my field of view and about 8 minutes just to go through a little opening in the trees in front of my house. How could a satellite go this slow if it were orbiting  our planet? Also...it was a tiny point of light, not at all like the light emitted from the satellite that whizzed through my field of view. I don't know what the heck it was but it seemd to me to be out in space, far from our atmosphere. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen anything like this?

[Stu]

If this was a satellite, how could it be this slow. I mean...a satellite went through my field of view as I was watching this and it went by so fast that I barely got a glimpse of it. This object took twelve seconds just to go through my field of view and about 8 minutes just to go through a little opening in the trees in front of my house. How could a satellite go this slow if it were orbiting our planet? Also...it was a tiny point of light, not at all like the light emitted from the satellite that whizzed through my field of view. I don't know what the heck it was but it seemd to me to be out in space, far from our atmosphere. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen anything like this?

That's exactly what a geostationary satellite is! They are around 22000 miles away, rather than the low earth orbit satellites which whizz around a couple of hundred miles up. They appear to be fixed in position and move slowly relative to the background stars. The one I found seems to match the direction of movement you observed so it's likely to be something along these lines.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit

[epaddict]

Great! It's nice to actually be able to make sense of something out there for a change...This is something I wasn't aware of...cool!

[jam1e1]

ive seen the same satellite 'phenomena' couple of times, also 1 last night, similar slow speed - using a 150mm F7.9 frac and 17mm EP, took about 30ish seconds to cross the EP, was near Altair around 930pm ish. I thought Geo were literally non moving, interesting to hear some have localised orbits - you learn something new everyday! I have wondered up till now why exceptionally slow satellites appear - now I know 

[epaddict]

I guess what caught my eye with this one was; it didn't appear as a satellite, it was such a faint light a solid white light with no shine to it. And it appeard to be way out there, but I'm not an expert at judgeing distances.  

[Stu]

I've just come across another possibility for a slow moving N/S satellite. The highly elliptical orbit described here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_elliptical_orbit

[Stu]

I guess what caught my eye with this one was; it didn't appear as a satellite, it was such a faint light a solid white light with no shine to it. And it appeard to be way out there, but I'm not an expert at judgeing distances.

Btw, judging distances is virtually impossible. You need to know true brightness, actual speed etc to even begin to estimate it I think.

[epaddict]

I agree, especially the farther out one goes. I'm amazed at those double stars that seem so close together only to find out they're fifty zillion trillion light years from each other...it still boggles my mind.