- #1
Perpetual Student
I'm the farthest thing in the world from an expert, but I've seen the usual number of pictures and Discovery Channel programs... and I never saw anything like I saw last night (8-1):
I'm in San Diego, California. I went outside Tuesday night a little bit after 11 PM, and was casually looking around at the night sky while one of my friends finished talking to another friend. I noticed a little moving light up there, but didn't pay it any heed at first, because here in San Diego we have lots of military bases, and it's not uncommon to see a plane or helicopter, and its attendant lights, at night. But then:
Suddenly, a short vertical streak of bright greenish-blue light appeared; it was very clear and sharp-edged, even in width throughout, and looked solid, not dusty or cloudy. After a fraction of a second, the streak became a star of sorts; not like the fuzzy glowing dots that you see with the naked eye, but like someone had drawn a star shape with lines, vaguely like this:
Still bright greenish-blue, each of the lines seemed very clear and sharp-edged, a little thicker towards the middle and thinner and pointed at the end… this is beyond my ability to create an image of, sadly. There was absolutely no sound, and in the quiet suburban night I would have expected to hear something if there was an explosion… but this was so neat and perfect, it doesn't seem like it could have been caused by anything as chaotic as an explosion. Seriously, it looked perfectly symmetrical, like somebody had created it in Photoshop, and it maintained its size and shape as I looked at it. It looked like it was half an inch long from my perspective, so it was either small or high up; I don't know how to tell, but it was CLEAR, not soft or fuzzy. I saw the star for a couple of seconds, and then it was just gone. It did not fade, fizzle, spread out, break up; it was just gone. I saw absolutely nothing else in that area of the sky, no hint of smoke, falling debris, nothing. At no point before, during, or after the star was visible was there any evidence of anything flying around up there, or a laser beam coming up from the ground or elsewhere, or anything else at all in the sky other than clouds and a sprinkling of stars.
I have already taken this question to an astronomy forum, but because I did not see a glowing glob, which is what the various kinds of meteors all basically look like, and what I saw was far too geometrical and perfect to be an explosion of a meteor, this does not appear to be an astronomy issue.
Can anybody tell me what on Earth I saw?
I'm in San Diego, California. I went outside Tuesday night a little bit after 11 PM, and was casually looking around at the night sky while one of my friends finished talking to another friend. I noticed a little moving light up there, but didn't pay it any heed at first, because here in San Diego we have lots of military bases, and it's not uncommon to see a plane or helicopter, and its attendant lights, at night. But then:
Suddenly, a short vertical streak of bright greenish-blue light appeared; it was very clear and sharp-edged, even in width throughout, and looked solid, not dusty or cloudy. After a fraction of a second, the streak became a star of sorts; not like the fuzzy glowing dots that you see with the naked eye, but like someone had drawn a star shape with lines, vaguely like this:
Still bright greenish-blue, each of the lines seemed very clear and sharp-edged, a little thicker towards the middle and thinner and pointed at the end… this is beyond my ability to create an image of, sadly. There was absolutely no sound, and in the quiet suburban night I would have expected to hear something if there was an explosion… but this was so neat and perfect, it doesn't seem like it could have been caused by anything as chaotic as an explosion. Seriously, it looked perfectly symmetrical, like somebody had created it in Photoshop, and it maintained its size and shape as I looked at it. It looked like it was half an inch long from my perspective, so it was either small or high up; I don't know how to tell, but it was CLEAR, not soft or fuzzy. I saw the star for a couple of seconds, and then it was just gone. It did not fade, fizzle, spread out, break up; it was just gone. I saw absolutely nothing else in that area of the sky, no hint of smoke, falling debris, nothing. At no point before, during, or after the star was visible was there any evidence of anything flying around up there, or a laser beam coming up from the ground or elsewhere, or anything else at all in the sky other than clouds and a sprinkling of stars.
I have already taken this question to an astronomy forum, but because I did not see a glowing glob, which is what the various kinds of meteors all basically look like, and what I saw was far too geometrical and perfect to be an explosion of a meteor, this does not appear to be an astronomy issue.
Can anybody tell me what on Earth I saw?
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