Strange lights travelling through the plough last night

[assouptro]

I saw 2 white lights traveling south through the plough last night, at first I thought they must be satellites or space junk but one of them appeared to swerve towards the other then swerved back twice they then separated and one disappeared the other faded as it continued south.

i can't give a precise time but it was around 1am 

did anyone else see it? 

Can someone explain what I saw?

i have been stargazing most of my life and haven't seen anything quite like this before.

cheers

bryan 

[assouptro]

Just me then? 

I'd only just sipped a G&T so I know that's not responsible! 

[Stu]

Jet fighters playing around?

[ronin]

Problem with satellites is that there are a lot of them up there doing an assortment of things.

If 2 very much in tandem they sound like US NOSS satellites - 2 tethered satellites that are used to determine ship locations/positions. People get puzzled to see 2 but there are also the Chinese varsions that are 3 tethered and they get cries of UFO's.

Moving together may be the atmosphere, and one fading then the other sounds like the earths shadow.

Your best chance is Calsky, it lists an assortment of satellites. 2 problems is (at least I find) is getting your exact location in, Calsky tends to use your IP address and for me I find that can be 50 miles away. The other is actually chosing the right lot from the assorted of satellites it lists/groups.

They may just have been 2 Iridium satellites that by chance were visually close, they seemingly travel N-S and S-N so satisfy the direction, and more then once I have seen 2 are predicted to flare seconds apart on almost identical paths and locations.

[bejay1957]

Would certainly check HeavensAbove and/or Calsky for your location.  Had an odd sighting of my own a few weeks back, position/time matched a known Iridium flare, but I saw two very distinct lights/objects, not one.

[Phil Fargaze]

1 hour ago, bejay1957 said:

Would certainly check HeavensAbove and/or Calsky for your location.  Had an odd sighting of my own a few weeks back, position/time matched a known Iridium flare, but I saw two very distinct lights/objects, not one.

I`ve had a similar experience. I looked out for an Iridium flare and there seemed to be another object preceding the brighter main flare. However, they both travelled in a straight line without any swerving.

[Dave In Vermont]

You can install Previsat - a very good satellite-tracking program (FREE) which will help to identify many "odd lights" zipping through the night sky:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/previsat/

There are other such programs, too.But I like Previsat best.

Happy hunting,

Dave

[timwetherell]

On 5/2/2017 at 16:51, ronin said:

People get puzzled to see 2 but there are also the Chinese varsions that are 3 tethered and they get cries of UFO's.

 

Yup, saw just that in Australia, three in an equilateral triangle crossing the sky. I could see stars between them so knew it was a constellation of satellites - otherwise I would have joined the cry of UFO

[N3ptune]

This must be what you saw

[cotterless45]

No way ! They're back !

[chiltonstar]

Any chance they were "chinese lanterns"?? The curse of astronomers and haystack owners.....

Chris

[N3ptune]

I think it's a UFO for @assouptro I never saw anything strange myself yet. )`: but it must be a great experience to be the witness of mysterious lights, there is no doubt for me about it.

 

[assouptro]

11 hours ago, chiltonstar said:

Any chance they were "chinese lanterns"?? The curse of astronomers and haystack owners.....

Chris

Nope 

definately not lanterns 

I've seen them and used them, at first I thought they were satellites but one swung closer to the other and back again twice, quite rapidly then they separated as they travelled south, one of them dimming quicker than the other. 

My next door neighbour was out with his telescope and I wanted to call out to alert him, its better if you have a witness, but I couldn't remember his name! I know, it's mad but I was so excited by seeing something I'd never seen before after years of astronomy that my mind went blank!

[Tozza Hen]

48 minutes ago, assouptro said:

Nope 

definately not lanterns 

I've seen them and used them, at first I thought they were satellites but one swung closer to the other and back again twice, quite rapidly then they separated as they travelled south, one of them dimming quicker than the other. 

My next door neighbour was out with his telescope and I wanted to call out to alert him, its better if you have a witness, but I couldn't remember his name! I know, it's mad but I was so excited by seeing something I'd never seen before after years of astronomy that my mind went blank!

It's true - he was so excited he forgot my name - only lived next door to each other for nearly 10 years so it's understandable ?.  

I was staring at trend lines on PHD so wasn't looking up ?

[bejay1957]

Saw some Tweets last night from people imaging two apparently close Iridium flares (Iridiums 41 and 77), but they were @35 min apart in real seeing terms

[Stu]

One of our group saw two bright flaws together last night, not sure what they were.

[Davey-T]

Last Tuesday I think I saw Iridium sat's 43 and 82 travelling down from Jupiter towards Spica, both really bright and travelling in tandem a couple of arc min's apart, looked quite spooky.

Dave

[Bruce Leeroy]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

One of our group saw two bright flaws together last night, not sure what they were.

I saw 2 very bright satellites yesterday the 1st at 23:15 appx and 00:45 appx both following the same path and around twice the brightness/size of Jupiter...got the 2nd one on an iphone video, they both appeared very close to Jupiter and headed towards the east. Probably the brightest thing I've seen in the night sky. The blob in the white circle is the satellite and the white/red ring is a star. Video is 283mb @ 3 min in length.

[Pig]

Hya Bryan, I too have seen unusual flight patterns but only ever one at a time. However, it has happened on three occasions in the past nine months. I have no idea what they were but I do know what they were not 

[Ags]

Vogon constructor fleet.

[davehawkins]

Are they making a hyperspace bypass !

[Cjg]

The one time I've seen 'strange / unusual' lights in the sky, was from Seething; they were the booster rockets falling back to Earth after a launch. It was a couple of years ago, I'd known about the launch, but not bothered to look where in the sky they would be, but found out afterwards.

I wonder if what you saw Bryan was something similar?  Although what the 'swerve' was, have no idea. Are the military satellites 'stalking' or manoeuvreing against other countries satellites?  With the political tensions over North Korea, who knows what's happening with the military satellites.

Chris

[theclearskiesofthemoon]

On 02/05/2017 at 12:00, assouptro said:

I saw 2 white lights traveling south through the plough last night, at first I thought they must be satellites or space junk but one of them appeared to swerve towards the other then swerved back twice they then separated and one disappeared the other faded as it continued south.

i can't give a precise time but it was around 1am 

did anyone else see it? 

Can someone explain what I saw?

i have been stargazing most of my life and haven't seen anything quite like this before.

cheers

bryan 

There were several satellites visible around that time, at least two of which (both rocket bodies) would have travelled southwards through or very close to the Plough. One of those also got close to the paths of a few other satellites on orbits staying closer to the horizon which would explain the odd/disappearing behaviour of one of the lights you saw(most likely candidate for this object is the Iridium 38 satellite).

[wxsatuser]

On 02/05/2017 at 11:00, assouptro said:

I saw 2 white lights traveling south through the plough last night, at first I thought they must be satellites or space junk but one of them appeared to swerve towards the other then swerved back twice they then separated and one disappeared the other faded as it continued south.

i can't give a precise time but it was around 1am 

did anyone else see it? 

Can someone explain what I saw?

i have been stargazing most of my life and haven't seen anything quite like this before.

cheers

bryan 

Birds, most likely Geese.

[wxsatuser]

On 02/05/2017 at 11:00, assouptro said:

I saw 2 white lights traveling south through the plough last night, at first I thought they must be satellites or space junk but one of them appeared to swerve towards the other then swerved back twice they then separated and one disappeared the other faded as it continued south.

i can't give a precise time but it was around 1am 

did anyone else see it? 

Can someone explain what I saw?

i have been stargazing most of my life and haven't seen anything quite like this before.

cheers

bryan 

May be one explanation.

If they were satellites you may have suffered the Autokinetic effect.

Google it, quite fascinating.