2020-08-31 - Alden, NY - Cigar

Two objects moving together like a clock pendulum

I was observing the NE sky and observed a bright object appear that was clearly not part of the Big Dipper, Little Dipper and Draco constellations. Not to mention it was too early to start seeing any of those stars. The object was as bright as Venus would be at that time of day, but it was moving in a south westerly direction. The movements of the object were slightly erratic and it appeared to speed up and slow down. After watching this object for a couple minutes, I concluded it was not a plant, star, or satellite, so I hastily set up my Celestron telescope and was able to view the object for about 10 seconds before it disappeared. The object had an orange hue, was roughly cigar shaped and one end darker than the other. The interesting part is that there was another, much smaller object moving with the main object. The smaller object was circular in shape and had the same orange hue. Here is the interesting part... The objects were connected. I could see w! hat appeared to be a rigid rod connecting the two objects, the smaller object was definitely tethered to the larger object. The rod shaped object had the same orange hue. How they moved together is what blew my mind. The larger object controlled the smaller object in a manner much like a person would do if they were walking and playing with a yo-yo at the same time. Specifically, the smaller object appeared to swing forward and alongside the larger object, in an arc, until it was in front. As soon as the smaller object reached the front, it would start swinging backward, following the same arc until it was behind the larger object. As soon as it reached the back, it would swing back forward. Another way to illustrate this motion is that it was like how pendulum swings relative to the clock face on a grandfather clock, but with an arc of 180 degrees instead of 20 or 30 degrees. I watched this cycle for several iterations before it disappeared. I wish I had a camera connecte! d to my telescope because this would have been amazing footage! . This w as definitely NOT the SpaceX satellite train. I am an experienced star gazer/amateur astronomer.