I saw something strange in the sky last night. I was out looking for Perseid meteors around 10:30 pm. It was a bit on the early side but I thought I might get lucky. And I did. After 10 minutes or so I saw some very faint little shooting stars above me. It was mostly clear, with a bit of high haze in the east.
I looked across a field to try a different direction. It was clear above me and to the west. Almost immediately I saw a big fiery, flaming meteor come whizzing down. It had a long streak and looked great. Whoo hoo! Mission accomplished – I saw a good one. Time to go in. Then I noticed what looked to be a small plane or satellite moving very slowly in the west. It wasn’t blinking like a plane, though, and it seemed to be moving too slowly to be a satellite. I kept watching.
At first it was rectangular and small. Maybe it was the space station? I figured out roughly which direction it was moving – west to north. But slowly. It was like a tiny stick with a very light glow around it, as though light was reflecting off it.
As it moved from west to north, the shape seemed to change. The rectangle of light became more of a dot of light. The glow around it grew. First it was evenly distributed, then the top and bottom ends extended and started to twist. It looked a bit like a pinwheel shape. I again thought maybe it was the space station and they were dumping something or it was exhaust.
Then it changed again. We still had the dot of light in the enter, but the glow around it became more of a large, shape-shifting cloud. Still moving very slowly across the sky. Maybe it was getting larger because it was getting closer?
I was having trouble processing what it was at this point. Was it a cloud with weird reflections from the almost full moon? I looked around and saw no other clouds except the upper haze in the east. Nothing else looked or moved like it. And why was there a light inside of it?
About 30 seconds had passed since I started watching and it was getting more confusing. I realized I was having trouble figuring out how high up it was – guessing both space station and clouds.
The now cloud-with-light-inside kept moving to the north. I decided that this was in our atmosphere, not above.
The “cloud” continued to change shape and started to form more of a bow-tie shape. The dot of light was bright in the center, and there were now two “wings” of glowing cloud to each side. It looked a bit like a bat signal shape.
It seemed to pause (better not be aliens looking for abductees!), adjust direction, and it moved behind the hills.
I didn’t see it again. The whole thing took about a minute or slightly longer. I wanted to make sense of it, but couldn’t.
I decided to wait to look for a plane. They come over every once in a while. Maybe there was some layer of haze that I couldn’t really see, and everything flying over had this off effect?
Here comes a plane. Nope. It is perfectly clear, plus I see the colored lights are where they should be and blinking as one would expect.
I decide to go inside and make a quick sketch of the shapes.
I’m still not sure what it was that I was looking at. What’s your theory?
Rocket fuel dump maybe
From Spaceweather.com
“This is probably a fuel dump linked to a Vulcan Centaur rocket launched from Cape Canaveral by the United Launch Alliance (ULA). Carrying two satellites on behalf of the U.S. military, the rocket lifted off at 8:56 p.m. EDT on Aug. 12th (0056 GMT on Aug. 13th). When multiple satellites are deployed from a single rocket, the rocket sometimes spins to help the payloads go in different directions. That could account for the spiral shape of the exhaust.
Update: There is another possibility. Only 19 minutes before the Vulcan launch in Florida, Europe launched an Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. A deorbit burn from the Ariane could also explain this spiral.”
Chris. On Spaceweather.com you can see photos. See if it is what you were watching.
A Vulcan or Ariane!
That’s it! It was quite a wild show last night for people looking up.
I don’t think I’ll submit my sketch, though. : )
A bit more info
SpaceWeather reported that people looked at tracking data and say:
“Answer: It was the Ariane. Orbital elements for the METOP SG-A satellite it was carrying almost perfectly match the spiral’s trajectory.”
Also, keep looking up. The site mentioned that there will be more and more of these events as more satellites get launched (about 300 a year – almost daily now).
…
Knowing what it is now, it’s fun to look back at what I thought I was seeing, and what I got wrong.
My first guesses – a satellite or plane – were close but wrong. Space Station was a good guess but wrong. I almost got the direction of movement correct. The rocket fuel dump explains a bit why I had trouble telling if it was in our atmosphere or not… it was up there higher than planes. (Duh, I’ve seen videos of these spirals in other parts of the world but didn’t remember them or think about them as I was watching, probably because I had never seen one before.)
I’m guessing there was a bit of moonlight reflection on all of this, too. I’d say I was wrong about how far away this whole thing was from me, too. I was guessing it was closer to me (like a plane) and it didn’t occur to me that it might be seen all over the northern states.