Seen anything odd in the sky?

[kev]

Its been reported that a warm object about 0.5 degree across, realy bright, is somewhere up there, but then folk will say anything.

[glowjet]

Two ufo's having a race, & one doing a 45 degree angle while in flight...

Nadeem..

Yes I have witnessed the same phenomenon watching for meteors, two points of light traveling at high speed appeared above the Eastern horizon moving together till they almost reached the Zenith then they both split at 45 degs and shot right and left, increasing speed as they did so....

John.

[Tantalus]

I cant tell if this is serious or a wind up

??? What makes you think that this was a wind-up? If it was meant as a joke then I would have ended it with an appropriately funny icon. Given some of the posts in this thread, I thought mine was pretty unremarkeable... but genuine!

[Worzsel]

Two small satellites connected by a long tether, there's a picture of one here. Under the image, part of the caption says "Note that only a small part of the 4 km tether is shown deployed." The tether is l-o-n-g.

It was spotted accidentally with the 11x70s a number of years ago while i was scanning the eastern horizon. It was a white vertical line slowly drifting from south to north, and it took about 5 minutes to travel 135 azimuth degrees before it was lost in the treeline across the road.

I've no idea how far up it was in real altitude, but from my vantage point it was quite low to the horizon.. IIRC about 20 degrees. The binoculars were on the tripod, so it was easy to stay on the object and get a good view of it. It couldn't be seen naked-eye but was very clear in the binos, and i was surprised to see how long it was. The binos have an fov of 3.6 degrees, and the line was very noticable.. not just a small little line.

It was quite fascinating, and from what i understand you can look it up in Heavens-Above. If i find the directions how to do it, i'll post them.

Thanks, That sounds really exciting! I get a real buzz out of seeing satellites but it seems more stargazers consider them quite boring.

From what Iread on your link it doesn't sound like there are any tetherd satellites still up there, shame they would have made it on to my wish list

[Manok101]

I've occasionally seen things zip by while studying stuff, although I put it down as meteorites will look more closely if I get the chance