Large, brilliant 'flashlight' arced "off".
We were leaving the house for a short time. My wife was putting our daughter in the child seat and I had walked around to the opposite side of our car. The night sky was fairly clear and I always enjoy checking out the stars, whenever possible.
I happened to look up, wanting to catch some of the nearby planets (that are in good view right now) and stars. I noticed an unusually large light (about the size of a small pea, at arm's length) shining VERY brightly, nearby another fairly bright star. I thought it unusual that two abnormally bright stars were clusted together, so I fixed my gaze a little more. One looked to be simply a bright star.
The light on the right (approx. WNW of the other one in view) side grew extremely bright, almost as though a gigantic flashlight was shining straight down toward me. I commented outloud for my wife to look, but she was busy constraining our child within the seatbelts (she doesn't really get into star-gazing much anyway). I never broke my gaze, from the moment it caught my eye.
It grew very bright (almost pure white...brilliant) and then arced-off, for lack of a better description. It looked as though it 'rolled around' and I lost complete sight of the object. My best attempt at describing how it disappeared was that it looked like a very small eclipse. I verified that there were very few clouds in the area, if at all. The nearby 'star' on the left didn't change much throughout the whole ordeal (I suppose it was a true star).
After it 'turned off', I quickly scanned the sky for reference points. From my best guess (sorry I'm not more specific) I would say that this observance was in the NW sky area. I saw the open 'scoop' of the Big Dipper point up toward the North Star and noticed that the light I clearly saw, was off-alignment, over toward the NW (as the scoop-alignment pointed off toward my upper left). This event happened off to my upper right.
When we returned, and all during our driving time to and from our destination, I kept scanning the sky for any oddities. I saw none.
Perhaps someone else in the middle TN area saw something similar?
((NUFORC Note: Date is approximate. PD))
We were leaving the house for a short time. My wife was putting our daughter in the child seat and I had walked around to the opposite side of our car. The night sky was fairly clear and I always enjoy checking out the stars, whenever possible.
I happened to look up, wanting to catch some of the nearby planets (that are in good view right now) and stars. I noticed an unusually large light (about the size of a small pea, at arm's length) shining VERY brightly, nearby another fairly bright star. I thought it unusual that two abnormally bright stars were clusted together, so I fixed my gaze a little more. One looked to be simply a bright star.
The light on the right (approx. WNW of the other one in view) side grew extremely bright, almost as though a gigantic flashlight was shining straight down toward me. I commented outloud for my wife to look, but she was busy constraining our child within the seatbelts (she doesn't really get into star-gazing much anyway). I never broke my gaze, from the moment it caught my eye.
It grew very bright (almost pure white...brilliant) and then arced-off, for lack of a better description. It looked as though it 'rolled around' and I lost complete sight of the object. My best attempt at describing how it disappeared was that it looked like a very small eclipse. I verified that there were very few clouds in the area, if at all. The nearby 'star' on the left didn't change much throughout the whole ordeal (I suppose it was a true star).
After it 'turned off', I quickly scanned the sky for reference points. From my best guess (sorry I'm not more specific) I would say that this observance was in the NW sky area. I saw the open 'scoop' of the Big Dipper point up toward the North Star and noticed that the light I clearly saw, was off-alignment, over toward the NW (as the scoop-alignment pointed off toward my upper left). This event happened off to my upper right.
When we returned, and all during our driving time to and from our destination, I kept scanning the sky for any oddities. I saw none.
Perhaps someone else in the middle TN area saw something similar?
((NUFORC Note: Date is approximate. PD))
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
No
Off
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
Goodlettsville
USA
1 minute
1 minute
36.34
-86.72
light
TN
Occurred : 3/4/2004 21:30 (Entered as : 03/04/2004 21:30) Reported: 3/29/2004 12:07:36 PM 12:07 Posted: 3/29/2004 Location: Goodlettsville, TN Shape: Light Duration: 1 minute Characteristics: The object changed color
Large, brilliant 'flashlight' arced "off".