2010-10-21 - Hardy, VA - Light

Bright light at Smith Mountain Lake Virginia

Not a lot to this except...there is no explanation.

I own a boat dock on Smith Mountain Lake that looks west and gives me a great view of sunsets.

When the weather is nice, I might visit it several times a week at the end of the day. The view from the dock over the water looks west, and to the west about 25 miles away is Roanoke Virginia, which has a regional airport, and sometimes I watch the planes land, circle or take off. Tonight was very calm, no clouds, clear blue skies and unlimited visibility.

Well the sun set, and as usual, the glow from the city took its place in the west, as the stars began to come out. The brightest ones first of course. Now this must have been around or a little after 8 o'clock pm and I noticed two bright stars in the western horizon towards Roanoke. I figured they were both planets, thinking Venus on the left which was the dimmer of the two, and the brighter one on the right, well....had to be Jupiter I guessed, but pretty bright for Jupiter. Both were low in the horizon and nearly horizontally aligned.

Behind me (towards the east) was a full moon rising and that gave off quite a bit of light as well. It was a very nice and rather bright evening to sit outside and enjoy the end of the day which I continued to do for the next 25 minutes or so.

After about 20 minutes I looked above me thinking that the other stars would be coming out now as well, and a few were out, but much more dimmer in relationship to the two I had been watching. Well let me rephrase that, the one on the left could still have been Venus, but the Jupiter light on the right was still too bright. Even for Jupiter. Now I will admit, I am not even sure what planets are suppose to be out there at this time. But I supposed it was possible I was seeing two planets and Jupiter was really bright tonight. Then it happened. The "Jupiter" light on the right, after being absolutely motionless and hanging there with the "Venus” light for 25 minutes, began to move slowly in a northerly direction.

I need to say that I wouldn’t be writing this if I thought there was any way this could have been a plane, I have lived here all my life, I am very familiar with seeing planes in the distance landing at the Roanoke Airport. I have seen them when I was positioned "dead on" to their approach or take off and it can look like they are just vertically rising or vertically coming down. I have seen them land or take off at angles to me, and seen that gradual rise in take-off or gradual drop in landing. But this one was brighter, sat absolutely motionless for about 25 minutes, and then moved to the north. It eventually was obscured by the hills and I lost sight of it, but it was a lot closer than I thought. It really was astounding to see it move after all that time.

It wasn’t a plane, and it wasn’t Jupiter.

I am now wondering, if, because the moon was so bright behind me, that the moon was reflecting upon this "object" and making it seem brighter. It’s possible, but I know it wasn’t a plane; it hung in the sky for too long.

That’s my story.