2003-10-11 - Placerville, CA - Light

Unverified pair of bold star lights diminishing in perfect unison.

Upon driving from Apple Hill Farms located 10 miles east of Placerville CA heading west to Sacramento CA, I decided to exit highway 50 into Eldorado County which is approximately 30 miles or more east of Sacramento. I had anticipated the Moon rising around that time of the evening as it was almost a perfectly dark sky with vivid stars in appearance. The planet Mars was already up in the east-south-east direction maybe 40+ degrees [10 oclock high] above the horizon. I made an exit from the freeway and took a main road traveling back east and found an open hill area that I could set up my camera and take some time lapse photo's of the full Moon rising. While waiting patently for this to transform [30 minutes]the planet Mars had two neighbors that I thought to be stars in the distance to the left of it, which was nothing unusual, just as bright as your brightest star in the sky but bold. I kept notice of the two neighbors of Mars because they were easy to behold and I didn't recognize any star pattern that they belonged to, which I'm not a serious avid star gazer. As I was shooting the Moon rising photo's I looked serveral times at the lights [or stars] next to Mars [approx a minute at a time] and the final time I looked the two star lights begin to diminish in perfect sequence, exact correlating unison and vanished. The receding of their light took about seven seconds to dimenish altogether in unison from their star like brightness to nothing. They never moved, completely stationary all the time, and that's why I thought they were bold bright stars setting in the sky. I continued to check the sky to see if maybe a patch of high clouds were obscuring their visibility, and I looked for possible high fog patches passing through the sky as well, but I didn't see any of these effects. Neither of the other sky objects were affected, all the stars and the planet Mars which were within close radius of the two star lights were never affected and their brightness never diminished at all. Th! e sky was basically clear during that time of the evening except for a few stray patches of clouds/fog sitting on the horizon when the moon begin to rise. Although it has been over a week since I viewed this amazing specticle of objects in unison I continue to check the sky each night to make sure that the star lights I saw were not stars hidden by a sweep of the milky way and to my amazement I have yet to see those star lights or objects again, neither can I correlate any of the stars or planets in the sky to the placement of where the objects were. I'm still looking each night but I have found no resemblance of distance or pattern of objects to relate. The Moon was rising far to the left of the planet Mars which was already up in the sky, and Mars temporary neighbors were about two tenths of the distance from Mars judging from the the total distance between the Moon and Mars. If anyone has an explanation I would appreciate being informed. I considered maybe a satelite or orbiting objects from earth, but the star lights I witnessed were stationary through out the duration [over 30 minutes].