2019-07-26 - Alexandria, VA - Light

Bright white star darting around between 150-160 degrees S-SE before ascending away towards the Aquila constellation.

I had just backed our car into our parking spot.

Although it was a crystal clear night, there was a lot of light pollution and only a few bright stars were visible.

My husband got out of the car to walk to the mailboxes. I took the moment to look up at the sky and appreciate the view from our convertible before closing the roof.

While looking up westward at the sky, I saw a very bright white ‘star’ move across the sky SE to S (about 5-6”) in my peripheral vision. There were no other visible stars in its vicinity, nor were there any aircraft.

I slowly got out of the car without taking my eyes off the ‘star’ and turned to look up at it directly in its very high south position.

It continued to move in random directions, not varying much between 160 degrees S and 150 degrees SE .

I called for my husband to come over quickly, I pointed out the ‘star’ and asked him if he could see it moving, too. He said yes, and we stood watching the star dart around for about five minutes.

Then we laid down on the sidewalk to stabilize ourselves to be sure it was the ‘star’ that was moving and not our bodies. We continued to watch it dart around for another 10 minutes or so.

Although it did not waiver in its brightness until it seemed to move away, my husband also observed periodic white lights to the sides of the star. I did not see this detail.

We didn’t try to take any photos or videos because we only had our iPhones with us.

The movement seemed to start to slow down and the star seemed to move out further at 154 SE degrees towards the Aquila constellation.

We got up and walked to our house and encountered our neighbors. We pointed out the moving star and they could both see it and its movements but it was getting harder for any of us to make it out.

At 11:21 pm we went inside as the star was now too far away to discern from the light pollution.

This morning, a knowledgeable friend did a quick check on a satellite tracking app for the evening of the 26th and the brightest thing during the time frame I cited was an ISS pass (a very bright magnitude -1.1), but that was at the opposite side of the sky and skirting the northern horizon from our area's vantage point. The only satellite transiting Aquila at the time was a GPS sat on a polar orbit, which are very faint.