2010-07-31 - Riverside, CA - Light

Brilliant green object, seems to launch smaller white objetc

On 07/31/2010 I was on my back porch looking at the sky. The sky was clear with just a few scattered clouds. I had originally gone out to see what was happening, as about an hour earlier, a pair of Blackhawk helicopters were circling the area, extremely low with only their battle lights on. I ended up looking at the stars after they left. At 2152 hrs I noticed what seemed to be a satellite approaching from the south, about 30 degrees above the horizon. It was moving rather slow for a satellite and moving towards the northwest. It started as a dim white color but began increasing in size and intensity. Just when I thought I was about to see a good iridium flare, I realized that instead of flaring and then subsiding, this object was continuing to increase in size and brilliance. It became huge, larger and brighter than Saturn visible to the west, and the color was now an unusual shade of light green around the edge and brilliant white in the center. It appeare! d to be self-illuminated and not reflecting the sun. It remained at its brightest for several seconds, then it suddenly went completely dark for a fraction of a second, then returned with full brilliance. Concurrent with this display, I noticed a small, white object shooting off to the west at a slight downward angle. The white object looked like a small, very slow meteor leaving a short trail. It appeared slightly below the green object and quite a bit to the right of it, but the trajectory of the white object in relation to the green object gave me the impression it had shot out from it. (It is possible that it was just a meteor as there was nothing unusual about it other than its appearance and proximity to the green object.) The green object, after re-appearing, remained illuminated for a about a second, then rapidly diminished in size and became completely dark. It did not just blink off but seemed to "power down."

At 2202 hrs., I saw a two more objects one after another, almost directly overhead going from south to north. They performed similarly to the large green object, but did not become as bright and they remained white in color. They too grew in intensity, flashed on and off several times and then went dark. I checked the Heavens Above website and discovered that there were NO iridium satellites visible from my location on that date, and the other known objects that were visible were not overhead at the times or locations of these sightings.