2013-08-08 - North Spokane, WA - Sphere

Two orbs, one following the other.


((NUFORC Note: Japanese HTV-4 craft flying close to eht ISS. PD))


Sighting appeared approx 9:00 PM Thursday, Aug 8, 2013. Two orbs witnessed by four adult family members including myself.

While my wife and I walked our son and daughter in-law to their vehicle in our driveway, I looked up to see what appeared to be the space station, travelling from West to East, slightly to the North. It struck us as unusual, that trailing behind the larger white orb was a smaller orange sphere. The trailing orange sphere appeared almost tethered behind at a distance the width of a fist at arm’s length. All saw the two objects and commented, “What the heck?” I ran to the back deck and observed the two spheres through, Orion 9 x 63 binoculars.

I have observed the space station over one hundred times and am quite familiar with its behavior. Especially the change in brightness as it travels to the East and loses, “line of sight”, with the sun which changes its intensity of brightness as does its rotation. The first object was a bright white appearing object twice the size of either Venus or Jupiter at their brightness and about 50% larger than my observation of the Space Station, although about the same color and luminosity. The second orb which travelled directly behind the first was much smaller and orange, the size, color and brightness of Arcturus.

I was able to observe both spheres as the travelled through the sky at a similar speed to the space station until they both disappeared behind the tree line to the East. Note, during the approximate ninety, (90), seconds observed through the binoculars the intensity and color of both orbs did not change, nor did the spacing. In addition I looked for any kind of mass between the two orbs but saw none as the smaller orange orb followed directly behind and at the same angle as the leading larger white orb.

That’s it.