2009-09-08 - Lincoln, NE - Light

Bright star flashing different colors in western sky.

I was just arriving home from the store about 10:15PM on 9-8-2009 when I noticed my two neighbors sitting outside on the stoop of our apartment complex staring up at the sky. As I walked up to them I asked, "What are you looking at, a UFO?" To my surprise, the gentleman said, "I don't know, maybe!"

I then proceeded to look up in the western sky and noticed what looked to be a bright star. The "star" then started "blinking/flashing" different colors like red, blue and silver/white. The thing that was weird was it was flashing these colors all at once like red on top, blue on bottom but flashing very fast sometimes in a steady pattern. It would flash and strobe red, blue, red, blue, then blue on top, then red on bottom and all of a sudden it would be a solid silver/white light for like 3 seconds, then go back to the red, blue flashing! At first I thought it maybe could be a satellite but I thought they could reflect the sunlight in such a pattern. I have NEVER seen anything like this in my life!

I ran inside and grabbed my digital camera to snap a few pictures and by the time I got back outside, two more of my neighbors were also out looking at the "star". What I thought was weird was that every picture I took the "star" showed up in the LCD screen on the camera but not in the actual photos! (Just my luck!) We continued to watch the weird object for another 25 minutes or so and I noticed that it had been moving away ever so slightly WNW in the sky until it finally was out of our view from the apartment complex stoop. I started to tell my friends about it over the next few days and I think they thought I was crazy or something. A few days later, on of those friends came over to visit and told me that they had seen the exact same "star" that I had described to them earlier that week!!!