- #1
tonyxon22
- 75
- 5
I just saw an astronomy phenomenon with the following description:
a) It was like a "cloud of stars" containing approximately 1.000 shiny objects
b) It moved relatively fast (I compare the speed across the sky to the movement of an airplane that is so far away that you can hardly see it -at night of course-)
c) The general shape of the cloud changed slowly as it moved
At the beginning I thought it was just like a group of birds or something ordinary like that... but suddenly I realized that it was moving in the sky just across the position of Jupiter, and that when it really got my full attention and curiosity. I looked at it as long as I could before it moved to a region in the sky where my vision was covered by buildings.
It also caught my attention because it was partially clouded... I could see Jupiter clearly, but not many stars... It also caught my attention because as it was passing over Jupiter, some of the points kind of looked like Jupiter’s moons to me... That's when I ran to my room to look for my binoculars (I have the Celestron SkyMarter 20x80) but by the time I came back to the yard the "cloud" had moved away from Jupiter and I could not check if it was the moons or not (I thought it could be some kind of lensing effect on the atmosphere due to hot gas or something like that, so trying to look at Jupiter moons would help me confirm my theory).
Nevertheless I looked to the "cloud" through my binoculars and I identified two more characteristics:
d) All the shiny objects had roughly about the same brightness and the same color white/very clear blue
e) They all twinkled with the same frequency, about two or three times per second but not all together, more like random
-IT WAS OBVIOUSLY NOT A GROUP OF BIRDS-
I came home to look on the internet the explanation of this phenomenon but couldn't find anything serious with the same description. I actually found one post about other two people asking about a similar phenomenon and something that really caught my attention is that the other two people that apparently saw something similar were both in Portugal, which happens to be the same country where I live. They witnessed whatever they saw three years ago and both from the south of Portugal while I live (and saw it) on the north. Here is a link to that post if you are interested in their description:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120715115559AAqiVvpI saw this phenomenon today February 20th at approximately 00:12.
I also found a comment on a similar thread about a lensing effect caused by liquids on the outer atmosphere or something like that which sounded more realistic to me but the information was very short and poor. All the other information that I found online was pretty crappy and not serious talking about UFOs and other things that I do not take seriously.
The only reason I'm posting this here is because I respect this forum and the people who participate here and I have learned many things with your help, and as an amateur astronomer and a lover of physics I could not think of a better place to ask about the experience I just had. Hopefully this thread is not breaking the rules of the forum and some of the members here can give me a good feedback.
Thanks and best regards,
a) It was like a "cloud of stars" containing approximately 1.000 shiny objects
b) It moved relatively fast (I compare the speed across the sky to the movement of an airplane that is so far away that you can hardly see it -at night of course-)
c) The general shape of the cloud changed slowly as it moved
At the beginning I thought it was just like a group of birds or something ordinary like that... but suddenly I realized that it was moving in the sky just across the position of Jupiter, and that when it really got my full attention and curiosity. I looked at it as long as I could before it moved to a region in the sky where my vision was covered by buildings.
It also caught my attention because it was partially clouded... I could see Jupiter clearly, but not many stars... It also caught my attention because as it was passing over Jupiter, some of the points kind of looked like Jupiter’s moons to me... That's when I ran to my room to look for my binoculars (I have the Celestron SkyMarter 20x80) but by the time I came back to the yard the "cloud" had moved away from Jupiter and I could not check if it was the moons or not (I thought it could be some kind of lensing effect on the atmosphere due to hot gas or something like that, so trying to look at Jupiter moons would help me confirm my theory).
Nevertheless I looked to the "cloud" through my binoculars and I identified two more characteristics:
d) All the shiny objects had roughly about the same brightness and the same color white/very clear blue
e) They all twinkled with the same frequency, about two or three times per second but not all together, more like random
-IT WAS OBVIOUSLY NOT A GROUP OF BIRDS-
I came home to look on the internet the explanation of this phenomenon but couldn't find anything serious with the same description. I actually found one post about other two people asking about a similar phenomenon and something that really caught my attention is that the other two people that apparently saw something similar were both in Portugal, which happens to be the same country where I live. They witnessed whatever they saw three years ago and both from the south of Portugal while I live (and saw it) on the north. Here is a link to that post if you are interested in their description:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120715115559AAqiVvpI saw this phenomenon today February 20th at approximately 00:12.
I also found a comment on a similar thread about a lensing effect caused by liquids on the outer atmosphere or something like that which sounded more realistic to me but the information was very short and poor. All the other information that I found online was pretty crappy and not serious talking about UFOs and other things that I do not take seriously.
The only reason I'm posting this here is because I respect this forum and the people who participate here and I have learned many things with your help, and as an amateur astronomer and a lover of physics I could not think of a better place to ask about the experience I just had. Hopefully this thread is not breaking the rules of the forum and some of the members here can give me a good feedback.
Thanks and best regards,