2013-06-01 - Cloverdale, CA - Light

Lights in sky move back and forth while other lights form patterns.

We live in a mobile home on private property at about 1,000 ft. elevation which is a couple of miles from the nearest town. There are virtually no streetlights and houses are far apart; hence, our view of the night sky is excellent. I often step outside in the evenings to gaze briefly at the sky--ever hopeful I may be rewarded with the sight of a meteor.

Early Friday morning (06/01/2013) between 1 and 2:00 am, I briefly stepped outside onto our front deck but, after checking the sky for a couple of minutes and seeing nothing of interest, I was just about to go back inside when a pair of bright stars (at least that's what I thought they were at first) in the eastern sky just above the treeline caught my attention. The reason they did was because they actually appeared to be moving AWAY from each other in completely different trajectories! As I watched, the brighter star (which was, from my perspective straight above the other, slightly dimmer, star) began to descend vertically towards the tree line. At the same time, the dimmer star started moving horizontally in a northerly direction. After going a little way on these separate courses, both hesitated, stopped and began moving back toward each other again.

They moved back and forth like that slowly for a few minutes while I stood there, trying to figure out just WHAT they were and HOW they were doing what they were doing.

I then dashed inside our trailer--looked briefly for my pair of binoculars (but couldn't immediately find them)--and grabbed my Canon XS-100IS camera before dashing back outside.

I was able to take a little video and a couple of still shots while I fiddled with the settings trying to get something documented on film; however, I don't own a tripod and the "stars" were so far away that the quality of whatever shots I was able to get was severely downgraded.

I went back in the house briefly, found my binoculars and dug my small flashlight out of my purse. I decided to walk down the driveway to my daughter's place, bring her back with me to my house so someone else might be able to confirm what I was seeing.

My daughter got out of bed and followed me to our house at the top of the hill and confirmed that she also could see these two "stars" moving back and forth.

Looking through my binoculars, I scanned a group of very small, very dim "stars" directly to the north of the first two and noticed, after "pulling out" the zoom function of the binoculars that these lights were arranged in a very organized-looking pattern -- resembling 2 triangles stacked one atop the other with their apexes faced in opposite directions (like a "Star of David"). My daughter also took a look at them with the binoculars and confirmed they appeared to have this pattern.

I returned to observing the first 2, brighter, stars and noticed the brighter one was changing colors from blue to white to amber (or red/yellow) in rapid succession. After about 15 minutes or so, when I glanced back at the group of dimmer stars which had been arranged in the "Star of David" shape when last I looked at them, I found them to have moved into a different pattern which resembled a wheel with a "hub" in the center. There were 2 "rings" of lights at that time -- one "inside" the other -- and what appeared to be one light in the exact center of these 2 "rings."

All together I (and later, my daughter) observed these "lights" exhibit inexplicable motions and patterns for nearly an entire hour. They were still exhibiting these characteristics when both my daughter and I went inside for the night and went to bed.