Distant bright sphere, cruising...
I was standing outside at a house party in Oakland. I was having a conversation and smoking a cigarette with a friend of mine (tip of the hat to Jeff Rense). While talking, I saw in the sky and clearly noted what, appeared to be a distant orb.
At first I thought it was the landing lights or 'approach' lights for an airplane, as Oakland and San Francisco are often filled with commercial air traffic. Upon closer inspection though, I noticed that the apparent distance and stable quality - and indeed the color (a pale white-blue that I wouldn't associate with the operating illumination system of a commercial aircraft) - of the light didn't appear to be sourced from a plane.
My next assumption was that is was a satellite, due to the uncharacteristically clear and beautiful weather we have been having in the San Francisco Bay Area this year, you can catch one or two satellites a week zooming by in orbit reflecting the light of the sun, if you care to look.
However, this object, although probably most similar in appearance to an orbiting satellite, was of too great a size and brightness to be even the largest of low orbit satellites. This thing would have had to have been huge to produce an illumination of that magnitude at orbital distance.
It's smooth and extremely regular emission of light, at a very consistent brightness, and it's dead straight trajectory from roughly West to East - at an apparently level path from my vantage point there on the ground, and almost its ponderous quality of movement quickly disqualified any description of a "shooting star" or meteor that I've ever heard.
It had a roughly similar size and slightly diminished brightness compared to the current appearance of the now closely approached planet Mars in the night sky. NOTE: I would like to plainly iterate that this object was indeed NOT the planet Mars itself, to dispel any ideas of mistaken identification.
Perhaps the most notable thing about this light was that after about 15 seconds of very consistent traverse, it slowly, and extremely evenly, faded to black without any apparent change in velocity. I've never seen anything like it before...
I was standing outside at a house party in Oakland. I was having a conversation and smoking a cigarette with a friend of mine (tip of the hat to Jeff Rense). While talking, I saw in the sky and clearly noted what, appeared to be a distant orb.
At first I thought it was the landing lights or 'approach' lights for an airplane, as Oakland and San Francisco are often filled with commercial air traffic. Upon closer inspection though, I noticed that the apparent distance and stable quality - and indeed the color (a pale white-blue that I wouldn't associate with the operating illumination system of a commercial aircraft) - of the light didn't appear to be sourced from a plane.
My next assumption was that is was a satellite, due to the uncharacteristically clear and beautiful weather we have been having in the San Francisco Bay Area this year, you can catch one or two satellites a week zooming by in orbit reflecting the light of the sun, if you care to look.
However, this object, although probably most similar in appearance to an orbiting satellite, was of too great a size and brightness to be even the largest of low orbit satellites. This thing would have had to have been huge to produce an illumination of that magnitude at orbital distance.
It's smooth and extremely regular emission of light, at a very consistent brightness, and it's dead straight trajectory from roughly West to East - at an apparently level path from my vantage point there on the ground, and almost its ponderous quality of movement quickly disqualified any description of a "shooting star" or meteor that I've ever heard.
It had a roughly similar size and slightly diminished brightness compared to the current appearance of the now closely approached planet Mars in the night sky. NOTE: I would like to plainly iterate that this object was indeed NOT the planet Mars itself, to dispel any ideas of mistaken identification.
Perhaps the most notable thing about this light was that after about 15 seconds of very consistent traverse, it slowly, and extremely evenly, faded to black without any apparent change in velocity. I've never seen anything like it before...
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Oakland
USA
15 Seconds
15 Seconds
37.80
-122.23
sphere
CA
Occurred : 10/18/2003 21:30 (Entered as : 10-18-03 21:30) Reported: 10/19/2003 12:32:50 PM 12:32 Posted: 10/31/2003 Location: Oakland, CA Shape: Sphere Duration: 15 Seconds
Distant bright sphere, cruising...