Bright Light

[bmcgeough]

This morning 24/01/10 at aprox 06.17am I was woken by a bright light in the ssw of the sky . It was bright enough to wake me up and after watching for a couple of seconds I woke my partner up and she was able to watch as the light faded back down to nothing this lasted around 5-10 seconds, I have seen lots of things in the sky but never anything like this before, anybody have any suggestions as to what it could have been other than me going mad it was at a single point in the sky and not moving in any direction?????

Brian

[red dwalf]

could have been a flare from a satalite, irdium flare i think there called

[yeti monster]

Check on Heavens above, it should list all satalite flarings visible from your location.

[Ant]

here's a link Heavens-Above Home Page

You need to enter your location as accurate as possible as even a mile or two can make a big difference to the estimated brightness of these "Iridium Flares".

Not sure that even the brightest flare would be enough to wake you up though - might be a co-incidence...?

Ant

[Ant]

But check it quickly on Heavens Above , as Im sure you can only look in the past 24 hours...

Ant

[Beyond_Vision]

Are you saying this illuminated the room enough to wake you ? If so unlikely to be any thing astronomical

Regards

Kevin

[bmcgeough]

Hi

Thanks for all the replies, I think as one of you said it was more likely just luck that I woke up to see this light rather than being woken by it, however I am lucky enough to live in a dark area in Cornwall and the light was very very bright, I have looked on Heavens-Above and it does not show an Iridium Flare for my area, however I have looked at video clips on youtube and I must say they seem to show what appears to be very similar to the light I saw early this morning, the only thing I could say is the flare I saw did not seem to be moving across the sky in such a speedy way and appeared to be almost, if not fixed, in one spot. again thankyou for your replies.

Brian

[ollypenrice]

I'm not sure about the waking up being all that unlikely. We had a flssh of blue light here a while back - I don't know what it was - and it was bright enough in the peripheral vision of all three observers to make us look up from our respective eyepieces. There was snow on the ground, which helped. I read that iridium flares sometimes reach mag -9 which really is very bright indeed.

Olly