Flashing from a possible satellite tumbling on its arc.
Took my dog out for his last night potty run about 10:45 pm tonight. I always look up at the stars at night as it was something Dad and I used to do when I was growing up. He was an engineer, designing early communication satellites, and I know quite a few of his designs are above us, circling the Earth. Dad taught me how to identify a planet as opposed to a star, and how to track the satellites when they go overhead.
Tonight, I caught a glimpse of a flash of white light out of the corner of my eye traveling from the west to the east/southeast sky above the star Altair (used my Sky Guide app to figure its location), then dismissed it as I thought it was a light of an airplane high overhead. We are under the flight lines for our local airport and the nearby military base. I looked to the south and then back over where I saw the light and saw a smaller glimmer of it. Continued watching that area of the sky and it flashed again and again, somewhat in a predictive sequence about 2-3 seconds in between each flash and the duration of the flash was a fraction of a second which made it very hard to predict where it was going. When it flashed again, this time it was like a streamer flying in the wind with a 1-2 second duration and then it disappeared, only to quickly flash again a few more times before the light dimmed out of sight.
I do not believe it is a UFO craft. I believe I saw a satellite which may have been knocked so it's spinning while in orbit and caught the sun reflecting off its solar panels (the flashing light) instead of a steady glow which moves in an arc across the night sky. The flashing light was still traveling as if it were following a satellite arc, that's how I could guess where to look when I realized it wasn't an airplane flying overhead.
Just wondered if anyone else had seen the same thing tonight. Pretty interesting!
Took my dog out for his last night potty run about 10:45 pm tonight. I always look up at the stars at night as it was something Dad and I used to do when I was growing up. He was an engineer, designing early communication satellites, and I know quite a few of his designs are above us, circling the Earth. Dad taught me how to identify a planet as opposed to a star, and how to track the satellites when they go overhead.
Tonight, I caught a glimpse of a flash of white light out of the corner of my eye traveling from the west to the east/southeast sky above the star Altair (used my Sky Guide app to figure its location), then dismissed it as I thought it was a light of an airplane high overhead. We are under the flight lines for our local airport and the nearby military base. I looked to the south and then back over where I saw the light and saw a smaller glimmer of it. Continued watching that area of the sky and it flashed again and again, somewhat in a predictive sequence about 2-3 seconds in between each flash and the duration of the flash was a fraction of a second which made it very hard to predict where it was going. When it flashed again, this time it was like a streamer flying in the wind with a 1-2 second duration and then it disappeared, only to quickly flash again a few more times before the light dimmed out of sight.
I do not believe it is a UFO craft. I believe I saw a satellite which may have been knocked so it's spinning while in orbit and caught the sun reflecting off its solar panels (the flashing light) instead of a steady glow which moves in an arc across the night sky. The flashing light was still traveling as if it were following a satellite arc, that's how I could guess where to look when I realized it wasn't an airplane flying overhead.
Just wondered if anyone else had seen the same thing tonight. Pretty interesting!
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Fayetteville
USA
5 minutes
5 minutes
35.04
-78.95
unknown
NC
Occurred : 6/21/2019 22:45 (Entered as : 06/21/19 22:45) Reported: 6/21/2019 8:31:08 PM 20:31 Posted: 6/27/2019 Location: Fayetteville, NC Shape: Unknown Duration: 5 minutes
Flashing from a possible satellite tumbling on its arc.