2009-01-15 - Birmingham, AL - Light

Strange light(s) in the sky over Birmingham, Alabama for 2 consecutive days

In the Western sky around 6:15-7:00pm central time in Birmingham,AL I was outside on my back porch when I looked up (as I always do to look at the stars), and I observed a light in the sky that at first I thought was a star. The thing that caught my eye was the fact that it was a bit larger than a star and a lot brighter. I've seen this in the sky for the last few weeks, and I simply thought it was Jupiter or Venus or some other planet that I thought I had heard someone on TV talking about being in the night sky at this time in the year. Well, on this night and on the next, the "star" moved. I don't mean it moved a tiny bit, it really moved! If you hold your hand out at arm's length to measure the distance that it moved, it moved about 3-4 inches in any given direction. Sometimes it would perform a circle type movement, but most of the time it would just kind of "float" around, going from one side to the other, back and forth. I observed this for 40 minutes or so, until I could no longer see it (it seemed to sink in the sky as time went on). It would seem to be moving in a straight line at times, almost like it was deciding on a direction to take, and would travel in this straight line for a couple of inches (at arm's length) and then it would stop, only to move around aimlessly, without purpose again for a while. I'm not sure how many points of light there were coming from the object, but at times it seemed to have more than one, maybe three or more. Maybe it was disk shaped, because at times it would dim as though the lights were turning away from my direction. There were no flashing lights of any color, only whitish light. I hope to see it again the next few nights to take a picture or video of it.(I have no camera, but my girlfriend does)