Unknown night sky object

I'm looking for the answer of what I saw tonight. I couldn't find anything on the internet so I'm posting here to see if someone knows. Here's my notes.

Date and time of observation: Monday, Sept. 7, 2009, 9:05 pm.

Viewing location: San Jose, California

Direction observed: looking towards the southwest

Elevation of object: about 30 degrees

Distance of object: estimate very high altitude or low earth orbit

Description of object: bright red light, not quite steady and slightly unstable.

Direction of travel of object: lateral across the horizon towards the south

Speed of object: unable to determine without knowing distance. Much slower than a passing satellite.

Duration of sighting: ten minutes. During that time the object slowly dimmed out and became barely visible to the unaided eye. About a minute later it came on bright again and continued so for several more minutes as it continued to move very slowly to the south.

Distance covered: about 15 degrees of a 360 degree circle.

Witnesses at my location: five including me.

Witnesses at other locations: none. I called a friend in San Mateo which is 30 miles to the north, and another person 60 miles to the south during the event. Neither person could see the red light. The person 60 miles to the south could easily see Jupiter which I used as a nearby reference point (almost the same elevation although Jupiter was about 45 degrees to the south of the red light).

Tools used: 10-40x60mm binoculars without a tripod. No camera or video.

What I ruled out. Mars or any planet. Just too bright. Aircraft didn't seem likely to me either. I've seen both day and night missile tests before and know how they appear, and this didn't look like a missile on re-entry. When satellites move across the sky their movement is apparent. The red light was barely moving when compared to background stars as seen through binoculars.

Possibility: space station and shuttle. The shuttle is currently docked to the station, and according to the sightings page for my area they had just passed that area of the night sky ten minutes prior. However, I have seen the space station pass on numerous past occasions and it's orbit is much much faster than the red light I observed. The proximity and timing are close and I think it's likely related, although the station/shuttle were travelling the opposite direction (per the website) of the red light. :thinking: Maybe a large piece of the station fell off and burned up on re-entry. :shrug:

Did anyone else see this or hear of something NASA was doing?

Years ago I saw something far more dramatic ..

Working Afternoon shift at the time , came home , and started watching Star trek , anyhow , my dog went nuts , so I went outside to see what was wrong , and he seemed to be barking at nothing ..

Then there was a flash , a mighty bright one at that , again my dog just went off his nut , looking up I saw a slowly fading wedge shape flying overhead , East to West , and it looked to be seriously high up , but I could see the shape clearly ?? as to size , there was another flash and the ?? sped up seriously and as the glow faded the ?? seemed to slow down slightly ...

Did I see the Super Secret Scram jet ? It took about 2 minutes to flash across the sky .. ?? Altitude , Since I could not hear it , I figure it was seriously high up .

The way the object faded in and out slowly would lead me to believe that it was something in-orbit, and if it didn't move like a satellite or station/shuttle then the remaining candidate is space junk. Space junk doesn't have to move at any specific speed, it moves in and out of sunlight just like any other orbiting object, and travels in a straight line. I would attribute the red color to smoke in the atmosphere, since the object was somewhat near to horizon.

I see almost as many bits of space junk out here in the High Desert as I do satellites; usually they "blink" very slowly, similar to a slow aircraft strobe, except the light comes on and off gradually, like someone adjusting an incan dimmer - as the object tumbles/spins in space, the reflective surface comes and goes into/out of view, thus a blinking effect. I've also seen one that wobbled as it tumbled, creating a non-ballistic-trajectory appearance as each "blink" would curve off to one side.

I just checked my satellite program for that time and location. It was the international space station.

That's better!

:tinfoil:

:sleepy:

Phew! :sweat:
Now the one in China... :tinfoil:

JWP_EE said:

I just checked my satellite program for that time and location. It was the international space station.

Click to expand...

I mentioned that possibilty already. The duration of the shuttle/station was 4 minutes as it crossed from horizon to horizon. Not so with the red light, as the duration was about 10 minutes, and it didn't cover that much distance.

The object appeared to be either self illuminated or casting a really big reflection from the sun. The color was a bright ruby red. I'm thinking now that something was burning up in the atmosphere.

Here's something I found online. Maybe they lost control of the debris they collected or decided instead to burn it.

What you saw may not have been the space station. But the space station did pass your site with a maximum elevation of 30 degrees looking south at 9:03 PM.

It could have been the typical prank with the flare tied to the balloon. Think I'll do that tonight.

I was out on the patio with family on Sunday evening watching stars, planets and several satellites. One was a monster and I guess it to be the IST. I haven't looked up the schedule yet though. In any case, LowBat's didn't sound like anything in conventional orbit so I'm guessing low orbit, low speed space debris. I wish I could have seen it though since it sounded interesting.

get-lit said:

It could have been the typical prank with the flare tied to the balloon. Think I'll do that tonight.

Click to expand...

...think twice...CA fires being declared a homicide investigation...

Its interesting to note why threads like this always veer to UFOs...some people here too are also paranoid about stuff like this. One of these days I'll mount a high power motor to my frisbee and mount a ring of SMT LEDs with a chaser circuit and fly it over city tops for kicks.

red huh...
that's odd, of the satellites, ISS, Hubble, Iradium flare orbits I've seen nothing could portray red.

If there's no lights strobing chances are it wasn't a plane...that is, if seen in a moderate altitude

"unstable" should be the atmospheric flow, the same way water vapor distorts the road when viewed on a hot day.

If the speed is slower than a passing satellite it may be some sort of aircraft cruising at a high service ceiling. I once saw 6 aircraft, I'm guessing F16s flying in a delta formation. There were no flashing lights and in total darkness you could barely distinguish it from the stars in the back ground.
This was in St. Cloud, FL in midnight.

At this point we cannot exclude something being burned up due to orbital decay...given the beehive to work with at this point. :shakehead

Illum said:

Its interesting to note why threads like this always veer to UFOs...some people here too are also paranoid about stuff like this. One of these days I'll mount a high power motor to my frisbee and mount a ring of SMT LEDs with a chaser circuit and fly it over city tops for kicks.

red huh...
that's odd, of the satellites, ISS, Hubble, Iradium flare orbits I've seen nothing could portray red.

If there's no lights strobing chances are it wasn't a plane...that is, if seen in a moderate altitude

"unstable" should be the atmospheric flow, the same way water vapor distorts the road when viewed on a hot day.

If the speed is slower than a passing satellite it may be some sort of aircraft cruising at a high service ceiling. I once saw 6 aircraft, I'm guessing F16s flying in a delta formation. There were no flashing lights and in total darkness you could barely distinguish it from the stars in the back ground.
This was in St. Cloud, FL in midnight.

At this point we cannot exclude something being burned up due to orbital decay...given the beehive to work with at this point. :shakehead

Click to expand...

+1
Wanted to add a quote from this link (that B@rt added):
"The days when a picture constituted proof of anything are long since over. Until we have a landing and a meeting covered by the worlds press..its situation normal...No news here folks"

Don't want to spoil the party. I just don't think there are others until 'see quote above'.

I still can't find anything in the news on this.

As I mentioned this wasn't the space station with attached shuttle as I'm familar with how they appear in orbit. Furthermore, the station appears as a white star crossing the night sky and not a red glow that appears to be almost stationary. I really do suspect the crew up there either intentionally or accidently caused something to fall into the earth's atmosphere. The station passing that part of the sky only minutes prior makes it a likely source. I'm now wondering why nothing has been reported by the media.

LowBat said:

I still can't find anything in the news on this.

As I mentioned this wasn't the space station with attached shuttle as I'm familar with how they appear in orbit. Furthermore, the station appears as a white star crossing the night sky and not a red glow that appears to be almost stationary. I really do suspect the crew up there either intentionally or accidently caused something to fall into the earth's atmosphere. The station passing that part of the sky only minutes prior makes it a likely source. I'm now wondering why nothing has been reported by the media.

Click to expand...

Maybe the crew up there intentionally threw their dirty garbage bin into the earth's atmosphere. Then the garbage bin burned in the sky. you saw this "UFO" emitted bright red light, not quite steady and slightly unstable, right, it's just the fire light. Did this garbage bin hurt anybody?

that's certainly plausible...I know the ISS once stuffed a old Russian space suit filled with six batteries, a transmitter, a recording of children's voices, and dirty laundry before send it in orbit before it burned up entering the atmosphere

I witnessed the same thing, it was definitely not the ISS. I went outside to see the ISS, I watched it in the NW sky. This red light was in the SE sky. I live in San Jose and could only find one other reference to it, someone in Campbell. They reported it on the MUFON site (I never heard of them either).


I urge you to file your report on that site, you'd be the 3rd report. You have good info about it not being able to be seen in San Mateo or south of here.

My only explanation is that it was some kind of rocket traveling away from us which gave it a stationary appearance with an overall dimming as it got farther away. A shroud around the exhaust would give it a narrow viewing angle.

My case file: http://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/manage_sighting_reports.pl?mode=view_long_desc&id=19143&rnd=590121252505178

Campbell sighting: http://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/manage_...e=view_long_desc&id=19131&rnd=590121252505178

to file a report: http://www.mufon.com/reportufo.htm

sabojo, :welcome:

Thanks for the MUFON link. I did as you suggested and filed a report. Interesting that two locations in San Jose and one location in nearby Campbell were the only reported witness locations of this red light. If my theory is correct and this was something burning up on re-entry, I wonder how wide of an area on the ground could see it. Doesn't the atmosphere start around 100 miles up?

I knew it was pointless to attempt a pic with my low res cell camera, but I see the person in Campbell got a decent picture with their iPhone. I'll post it here for others to see.



The report with this picture mentioned small white dots interacting with the red light. I didn't witness the white dots other than the background stars which were very clear and stationary as viewed through my binoculars. I did however see what appeared to be a satellite pass over the area minutes after the red light disappeared from view, but I doubt if it was related.

I just remembered where I heard of MUFON before. It was referred to in an episode of the X-Files. I hope I don't get any visits from the men in black.

I would only refer to this as a UFO in the sense that it's an unidentified object. ET it is not, and as a former student of stellar astronomy, I know the distances are far too vast for such a thing to happen. I believe if we are ever lucky enough to detect any ET intelligence it will be in the form of a radio emission (speed of light) that has been traveling a very long time to get here. Radio waves are snail mail when looking at the big picture. They take an enormous amount of time to reach us, but they are far more likely to be our first evidence of an ET than any narrowly focused and extremely slow spacecraft. For ET to get here, his or her or it's vehicle would need to have been built and launched a very long time ago.

To continue to hijack my own thread; I believe life is likely out there, but way way way too far away. I also believe we are among the first eggs to hatch, sort of speak. My thinking; the universe is 13.7 billion years old and our solar system is 4.5 billion years old. It has taken two supernova cycles to make up the heavier elements we have here on earth. Doing the math it takes about as long of a time since the big bang to reach the level of life we have here on earth. It also takes an enormous amount of luck to have a nice planet within the Goldilocks zone (not too hot and not too cold) with a nice moon to stabilize the planet from the extreme temperature shifts associated with an unstable axis. I think we are not unique, just very very very rare, and very very very spread apart.