Up in the sky..."it's a plane, it's a bird, it's WTF is it"

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Had an interesting night last night. I went to a small gathering deep in the woods where a friend has cleared hundreds of trees to create a 4 acre lot to build a home. The pile of trees in the middle was about 30 feet wide and 15 feet tall so it called for a bonfire

Just as it was getting dark, something was slowly moving across the sky that none of us could identify. It was bright and had a huge tail 



 

We watched it for several minutes before it went out of sight behind the mountains but really struggled trying to figure out what it was. It looked like a comet, but there would have been news that a comet was passing. It was too slow crossing the horizon to be a meteor. Too bright and having that long tail made it impossible to be a plane. We just had no idea. One guy said it looked like a rocket, but we are in Upstate New York deep in the woods - not on the beaches of Florida. The women folk got out their cell phones and snapped pictures because no one would believe what we were witnessing

Anyway, had to check the morning news because it was a phenomenon that had to have gotten the attention of far more people than our small party. Sure enough, this morning's news identified it as Elon Musk's SpaceX launch of 53 Starling satellites last evening. Shocking to me that I can watch a rocket fly across the sky in New York. Fascinating

[DaveBrown74]

Wow, you guys must have been flipped out when that was happening.

I was going to say before I read what it really was, meteor or comet seems unlikely as the point of it looks so sharp and defined. Definitely looks like something clearly manufactured in that picture.

[Slugsy-Narrows]

Jolly

I gotta ask a few questions......

Was their a practical joker among the group who could have messed with ya?

Was there a partaking of any shrooms?

The most important question and we all need to know.....

Were you probed during the experience?



All joking aside that is pretty cool UFOs have always fascinated me!  May have been Elons rocket BUT in that moment you have no clue and it had to be pretty crazy to watch!

I know when I go to Ga and am hunting at night   Looking up with no lights to wash out the sky it truly is beautiful to look up and see!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Jolly Blue Giant]

No shrooms, but plenty of beer...and no shortage of jokers and no probing LOL. There were many corny remarks..."oh great, looks like Putin finally did it, he pulled the trigger"..."I guess this is it guys, the end of the world"...etc

And yeah, clear sky, and we were far enough from the lights of Binghamton that it was just us, our beer, meat cooking on a wood fire, and the bonfire hadn't been started yet, a few deer popping out of the woods, the yipping of coyotes in the distance, and the universe over our heads. Couldn't have been a more delightful evening

[Sem]

That's a really cool picture and experience, made even better by trying to guess what it was you were witnessing.
We live about 20 miles from VAFB, as the crow flies, and SpaceX schedules one or two launches a month. Daylight and after dark launches are quite different visually, but are equally awesome. They just had a launch yesterday afternoon and even though we're visiting the grandkids, a couple hours to the south, we were still able to see the rocket and exhaust trail.

[LennG]

Great job Ric.

While we were on our last cruise, we went out every night we could to try and see the Northern Lights. Our particular ship had an area that was pretty dark and we were able to view the night sky pretty well. For a couple of nights, both my wife and I watched a light in the sky that was sort of doing tricks, like stopping, reversing the way it was going, and then stopping and starting several times. We scratched our heads about it. What we did see regularly were satellites which I was going to say, maybe what you saw, a satellite that was reentering the earth's atmosphere and burning up. In a completely dark sky, it was pretty easy to see these satellites, as they moved in a straight line thru the entire sky.

[Jolly Blue Giant]

Great job Ric.

While we were on our last cruise, we went out every night we could to try and see the Northern Lights. Our particular ship had an area that was pretty dark and we were able to view the night sky pretty well. For a couple of nights, both my wife and I watched a light in the sky that was sort of doing tricks, like stopping, reversing the way it was going, and then stopping and starting several times. We scratched our heads about it. What we did see regularly were satellites which I was going to say, maybe what you saw, a satellite that was reentering the earth's atmosphere and burning up. In a completely dark sky, it was pretty easy to see these satellites, as they moved in a straight line thru the entire sky.

I'd love to see the Northern Lights someday. When I travel though, it's usually towards warmth 

We wondered about a disintegrating satellite. We thought of everything including a rocket, but dismissed a rocket off hand because we're in New York   

[LennG]

I have had the privilege to view the Northern Lights several times now. On our 21-day cruise, we didn't have the best weather many nights, but on the nights when it was clear, we were out about 12 midnight and were able to view the Lights on 4 different occasions. Two times, really minor, and one pretty good, but on one, almost the entire Northern sky was showing them. They only last for minutes many times, but keep reappearing, going dim, reappearing, so you have to be patient. We usually stayed out till about 1-1:30 and then called it a night, others stayed out longer and some saw more, while others didn't.

On our first trip to Alaska, we had a flight home from Anchorage at midnight. I read online that if you were to see the Northern Lights it would be from the left side of the plane, so when we checked in I requested our seats to be changed to the left side. The attendant snickered when we told her why, but we had the last laugh. Once we gained altitude, we were treated to a remarkable display of the Northern Lights for almost a full hour. The pilot of the plane even commented on how unusual it was to see them that bright at that time of the year and everyone from the right side of the plane was soon on the left side. It was truly the highlight of our trip and all I talked about for weeks afterward.

[Sem]

SpaceX launch of a Falcon 9 rocket a few minutes ago from Vandenberg Space Force Base, about 20 miles from my house. It's carrying 55 Starlink satellites.