meteor lizard cornwall

[roscoe]

On the 13th sept 20.38 approx.just as the sun had gone into the horizon, and the sky was still fairly light and blue,on a cloudless sky,i saw an orange light. it was quite high up,after i gathered its bearing in the sky and after it emitted a corola i dismissed it as being an helicopter light or aircraft,this took about two minutes.i then started umming and ahhing about getting my binoculars out of the car,but didnt want to take my eyes off the object.then at that moment it made some fizzelly sparkly scenes,nothing exitingly explosive,just as a shooting star would make as it fizzles out in our atmosphere.

But then i noticed a grey dot where it had been,and grabbed my 7 by 50 standard binocs, and clearly observed a potato like object rotating,with its indentations catching the light as it spun,and it travelled high up and slowly across the sky for just under a minute/45 seconds maybe,and then disappeared,back out to space i suppose.

Can anyone tell me,is this a common occurance. It looked pretty big from what i could gather,and someone ide imagine with earth radar etc.must have noticed it.

A commercial plane at its full hight compared would be alot smaller than the object i saw. i emailed some centres for any information but never recieved any replies,but would love to hear of any similar experiences or knowledge of this kind of event,frequency,composition etc.

A few years back i observed a similar event,with a black sky and partial moon,and after maybe 3 minutes of orangish global ,it turned into a disc,almost like saturn,id imagine as it entered the atmosphere it was giving off a horizontal light spectrum,as particles were burning off,and then disappeared,leaving a triangular shape where it had been,that almost looked like a plane had dropped its cargo of water,and it was only visable by the moonlight.

I can fully understand how people have reported seeing disc shaped spacecraft,this was an absolute classic example.

If you cant give up, a good excuse to smoke outside,me thinks.

Please share any similar events,many thanks roscoe

[Talitha]

The two objects from 13 Sep might not be related. The shooting star fizzle sounds like a glittery meteor, and the rotating object sounds like a satellite or piece of space debris. When the object 'disappeared' it probably entered the Earth's shadow and was no longer visble, giving it the appearance of having gone off into space.

Maybe the satellite/debris was lined up perfectly with a meteor in the first moments you noticed them? That would explain them appearing to have been related, although I'm not quite sure of the odds of this happening.

The second object you mentioned (orange) may very well have been one of the Shuttles performing a routine waste water dump. From reports I've read online, the ejected liquid would appear to be fan-shaped just as you described.

Very interesting observations, btw... thanks for posting them.

[ashenlight]

How cool I always find it fascinating to read reports of these kind of things. I think alot of people who just view astronomy as a 'geeky hobby' just assume we spend alnight looking at dots of light in the sky. It's great to read of people's 'wow' moments like this

[DemonicOmelette]

I remember when I was a kid back in Canada, a couple friends and I were out late one evening building snow forts for a massive snowball fight we had planned for the next day. Suddenly, across the sky, flew what I can only describe as a massive fireball. It was about the size of a golf-ball in the sky, trailing a long firey tail. It moved pretty quick, maybe 2 or 3 seconds to get from horizon to horizon, and was so close you could see it spinning and see craters and features on it's surface. Being boys of about 12 years old, we screamed like schoolgirls, and ran home. After collecting our nerves (and changing our pants), we spent the next month or so scouring the countryside looking for craters/aliens...

I remember it like it was yesterday! Amazing sight, and something I guess you only see once (or twice) in a lifetime!

-eli