1998-04-25 - Frisco, CO - Oval

lights act like a star then zoom!

In 1998 while living in the mountains in Colorado,I used to go out snowmobiling on a reg basis "in evening" I went out to start my sled and being a minor astronomy buff at the time , had been learning star charts. I was admiring ophiuchus and othere southern oriented constalations when I noticed "sw about halfway from zenith" a extreamly bright star? pulsing red and blue. I have seen stars look this way when aurora or sunspots are active" but not this bright!" So as my sled warmed up I ran in and grabed my trusty spining sky chart and could not find where this mag -3.8+ - -6mag star was? it would have been just lower right of Spica and above crater.

I thought hmmm maby its a variable star not knowing it was too bright to be that at the time.

Then I thought I saw it do a quick loop back to its origanal spot,first I though maby I shouldnt be snowmobiling I must be tired "seeing things" But then I saw it do a quick j type turn and bounce back to it's spot before NOW I KNEW I SAW THAT I THOUGHT! I ran in grabed roommate and tried to get him to focus on object lining it up w/ a pole as refference to see if it moved. It did and he reluctanly said" I think I see what your seeing" It moves quick and then stops and pulses right? Yep.

I jumped on my sled and moved to a darker location w/ less lightpolution.

I set up a stick as reffernce point and layed on sled seat to stay still/steady and watched as this object did loops and figure 8,jturns always very fast and ending in same spot then it would get brighter red and blue pulses. I did have a cheap pair of spotting binoc. with, all I could see was it was like a squashed circle very bright seeming to have 2 or 3 points of light at edges blending together red and blue some white.

My first guess after seeing it at 8x was "damn smart it acts like a star moves fast,must be military test platform way up above NM.

But the more I watched it I kept thinking how do they deal with that g-force,this was amazing! I wish my camera was w/ me I didnt even think of grabing it! if I would have locked shutter open it would have shown up perfect.

I also cursed myself for not buying a video camera and even more importantly a good telescope as I would have loved to see this thing at 100x power or better. I now spend many nights looking up and out. I saw a simalar object 3 years later same area @ zenith did 2 zigzags then backed up took off NW "Gone" same size bright blue light some red pulsing.


((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the incident is approximate. PD))