2013-09-20 - Bluffdale, UT - Fireball

Amateur astronomer sees bright, stationary object next to a star begin to move and descend behind the mountains.

While pursuing my hobby of astronomy, I was observing westward to see Venus and Saturn shortly after sunset. At this time of year, there is also a bright star in the vicinity called Arcturus. As I turned my gaze to this star I was amazed to see what appeared to be another bright star sitting next to Arcturus, of approximately the same size and brightness. After several seconds, I realized this star was not a star at all as it suddenly started to move. It descended in a directly vertical direction and appeared to be thousands of feet above the ground. My next thought was that it was a high altitude flare, which I have seen before, but the brightness of the object did not change or fade away like flares do. This also does not explain why it was completely stationary in the sky before it began to "fall". I also considered that it might be a meteor, but the object was moving too slowly, perpendicular to the horizon line, and did not change in brightness, or break apart like a meteor. As the object continued to descend, I walked over to a pick-up truck and stood in the truck bed so that a nearby fence would not obscure my view. I lost sight of the object behind the Oquirrh Mountain Range, where it almost certainly would have made contact with the ground a few seconds later (assuming it continued in its trajectory). I am not saying it was any kind of extraterrestrial craft, but it was definitely strange and worthy of me reporting this event. There were no other bizarre events surrounding this observation.