strange stars or satellites

muincav

Did anyone notice at about 5.45pm this evening 2 what looked to be satellites moving uniformly together in the Easterly sky? Now I have often seen satellites before but never like this...to put it in laymans terms, imagine they were like lights on either end of a stick and it was moving across the sky at an angle approx 30 degrees off horizontal, neither going faster or slower than the other and then just faded away? Sorry for not being technical but that is the only way I can describe it...
Did anyone else see anything like this?
Thanks....

Plug

Airplane.

niginator

Saw this myself, before the usual claim that it was a chinese lantern... it was not. It looked like two stars except that they were moving together across the east skyline, and then just disappeared. I presume this was the due to the earths shadow (If thats what you call it). Same timing aswell as the above poster has mentioned!

Cú Giobach

Sometimes satellites are in pairs or triplets, you could have seen a couple of these NOSS satellites for example.

muincav

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Sometimes satellites are in pairs or triplets, you could have seen a couple of these NOSS satellites for example.

I think they were way too far apart for pair sats...but was kinda weird..

Micheal H

Yes, I saw these two lights as well in Sligo. Same time as the OP mentioned. I just noticed them as I was looking up at Jupiter, and they were moving just beneath it, in a north-west to south-east direction (approx). They were quite bright - I'd say almost the brightest objects in the sky after Jupiter. I saw them for about 30 seconds and they stayed in perfect "formation" throughout, before fading quite quickly.

I was in a pretty rural area, so there was no noise pollution and couldn't hear an aircraft engine of any kind. Definitely weren't Chinese lanterns either as niginator already said. I know the only logical explanation is that they were satellites, but they were unlike any other satellites I've ever seen (and I've seen many). Very odd indeed

muincav

Micheal H wrote: »

Yes, I saw these two lights as well in Sligo. Same time as the OP mentioned. I just noticed them as I was looking up at Jupiter, and they were moving just beneath it, in a north-west to south-east direction (approx). They were quite bright - I'd say almost the brightest objects in the sky after Jupiter. I saw them for about 30 seconds and they stayed in perfect "formation" throughout, before fading quite quickly.

I was in a pretty rural area, so there was no noise pollution and couldn't hear an aircraft engine of any kind. Definitely weren't Chinese lanterns either as niginator already said. I know the only logical explanation is that they were satellites, but they were unlike any other satellites I've ever seen (and I've seen many). Very odd indeed

Hi Micheal H,
thanks for the reply (im not crazy...lol)
Definitely not sats as the were too far apart, so now that you have seen them I really am intrigued.....thanks

niginator

Most likely was two of the NOSS satelites previously mentioned by Cu Giobach, however I'm not sure if they could have been them, as they did seem to have a bit of distance between them. The fact that I saw this on the east coast and Michael H saw it on the west coast, proves it was not aircraft etc...

Micheal H

Alright lads, after a bit of research I think Cú Giobach might have been right about them being two NOSS sats. I did a search for all satellites on www.heavens-above.com and the times for NOSS 3-4 (A) and NOSS 3-4 (C) match up pretty closely with our own times. Here's the stats for them...


Sat Name | Starts | Max Altitude | Ends
NOSS 3-4(A) | 17:35:12 10° NW | 17:42:01 67° NNE |17:48:52 10° ESE
NOSS 3-4(C) | 17:35:18 10° NW | 17:42:07 66° NNE | 17:48:58 10° ESE

So they both would have been in the Easterly sky at around 17:45 one trailing the other by about 6 seconds which would be just about right. The only thing that still doesn't look right to me is that when I saw them the trailing satellite was the one that was highest in the sky, but going by the data in the table, the trailing satellite is lower, which irks me a bit because it would have been nice for the data to correlate exactly with what I saw. Everything else seems to add up though.

So what do you think lads; is it case closed, or will it require further investigation?


Edit: Couldn't get my lovely table to work, so had to do a botch job on it. Hope it's understandable!

mossy2390

you never know it could be aliens!

niginator

Micheal H wrote: »

Alright lads, after a bit of research I think Cú Giobach might have been right about them being two NOSS sats. I did a search for all satellites on www.heavens-above.com and the times for NOSS 3-4 (A) and NOSS 3-4 (C) match up pretty closely with our own times. Here's the stats for them...


Sat Name | Starts | Max Altitude | Ends
NOSS 3-4(A) | 17:35:12 10° NW | 17:42:01 67° NNE |17:48:52 10° ESE
NOSS 3-4(C) | 17:35:18 10° NW | 17:42:07 66° NNE | 17:48:58 10° ESE

So they both would have been in the Easterly sky at around 17:45 one trailing the other by about 6 seconds which would be just about right. The only thing that still doesn't look right to me is that when I saw them the trailing satellite was the one that was highest in the sky, but going by the data in the table, the trailing satellite is lower, which irks me a bit because it would have been nice for the data to correlate exactly with what I saw. Everything else seems to add up though.

So what do you think lads; is it case closed, or will it require further investigation?


Edit: Couldn't get my lovely table to work, so had to do a botch job on it. Hope it's understandable!

Nice work, tried to find out that info myself. I would say that this information pretty much wraps up the case. I'd imagine the information is a very close estimate, as its pretty hard to predict the path of these satellites. I may be mistaken but I read somewhere that these satellites were tracked only by amateur astronomers, as the official orbital path of these satellites was not released when the satellites were launched.
So for me I have sufficient enough evidence anyway to believe that what we saw was indeed the NOSS satellites.

muincav

Micheal H wrote: »

Alright lads, after a bit of research I think Cú Giobach might have been right about them being two NOSS sats. I did a search for all satellites on www.heavens-above.com and the times for NOSS 3-4 (A) and NOSS 3-4 (C) match up pretty closely with our own times. Here's the stats for them...


Sat Name | Starts | Max Altitude | Ends
NOSS 3-4(A) | 17:35:12 10° NW | 17:42:01 67° NNE |17:48:52 10° ESE
NOSS 3-4(C) | 17:35:18 10° NW | 17:42:07 66° NNE | 17:48:58 10° ESE

So they both would have been in the Easterly sky at around 17:45 one trailing the other by about 6 seconds which would be just about right. The only thing that still doesn't look right to me is that when I saw them the trailing satellite was the one that was highest in the sky, but going by the data in the table, the trailing satellite is lower, which irks me a bit because it would have been nice for the data to correlate exactly with what I saw. Everything else seems to add up though.

So what do you think lads; is it case closed, or will it require further investigation?


Edit: Couldn't get my lovely table to work, so had to do a botch job on it. Hope it's understandable!

Same here Micheal,, the trailing satellite was higher so the data does not just correlate exactly with what we both saw, so still a mystery me thinks....

Micheal H

muincav wrote: »

Same here Micheal,, the trailing satellite was higher so the data does not just correlate exactly with what we both saw, so still a mystery me thinks....

Ah I dunno muincav, I think the mystery has been solved to be honest. From more reading up on them, they're US Navy spy satellites, and no offical orbit data was released. As niginator has said, that data is supplied by amateur astronomers, so I'm willing to ignore a slight discrepancy. Here are some photos and videos of previous sightings. I think you'll agree it's pretty much exactly what we saw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN6pdZbnDEg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bqzVz36O18

muincav

I think youve got it!!! Thanks Micheal.....:)