2008-10-01 - Lynchburg, VA - Light

I was walking my dog this morning when I saw a very bright orange light approaching from the south. At first I dismissed it as an airliner since it was close to the typical flight path of passenger jets I often see flying overhead. What caught my attention however was that I DID see an airliner and at that point I could compare/contrast the two. The bright orange light had no blinking navigation lights, no spot lights, and was easily traveling 3-4x the speed of the jet – on which the blinking lights were very evident. There was no evidence that the orange light was aware of the jet or visa-versa. The light traveled from south to north-east crossing the night sky in about 30 seconds at about a max of 40 degrees elevation. The color was a very distinct orange that never wavered. The flight path seemed constant, but the distance away was hard to determine. There was a faint sound of jet engines but since there was another plane in the sky I could not pinpoint the source.

My next thought was that this could be the ISS which I have taken time to spot a few times with my son. So as soon as the light passed behind the tree I did a quick online check and verified there are no ISS sightings for our location for a few more days. And since the shuttle flight was canceled yesterday, there was no need to check its flight path.

So all that said, I still cannot dismiss it as satellite or even a very high-flying advanced aircraft of some type. It did remind me greatly of other ISS passings and being about an hour before sunrise, a satellite makes sense. However, the speed, brightness, and orange hue were unique enough for me to submit a report.