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Waddensky t1_j8fhilw wrote

How did you know that it was further than an airplane? It's very hard to judge distances in the sky if your only reference is a light.

My first hunch would be a drone, they have blinking lights in different colours and move erratically.

Another suggestion is Sirius, a bright star well-known for it's twinkling and apparent rapid colour changing.

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Andyman0110 OP t1_j8ficgd wrote

Usually I can see the details of an airplane, like the shape and what not. I don't live far from an airport so generally I can hear and see them pretty well. I used my phone to zoom in 30x which usually let's me see even windows on a plane. This was still just an orb of light at max zoom.

I thought maybe a drone too, but it was flying for over an hour and was really far but still very bright. It seemed a little unlikely although it's not impossible. It really seemed to be in space and not in earth's atmosphere. Sirius is a bit too far east to be what I saw.

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weathercat4 t1_j8fgi3e wrote

Jupiter or Venus most likely. They move the same speed as the sun, it's the earth spinning 15°/hour.

Download an app like stellarium and check.

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Andyman0110 OP t1_j8fh19o wrote

Wow that's a really cool app. Thank you for that. It does appear to be jupiter from a very general quick look. I didn't know that it can flash different colors.

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weathercat4 t1_j8fhg07 wrote

That's called scintillation, it's cause by turbulence in the atmosphere refracting the light around. It's mostly noticable on bright objects near the horizon because you are looking through more atmosphere.

The apparent zipping around you described is another interesting illusion.

https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/autokinetic-effect-2.php

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Andyman0110 OP t1_j8fjv49 wrote

Very cool. The brain doesn't waste any opportunity to trick you lol. This is exactly what I saw, in clockwise circles too.

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GrumpyOldBear1968 t1_j8fjb7b wrote

Thanks for posting this, the answers have finally solved the mystery of a "UFO" I saw as a child!

the description is exactly what I saw, and now I have the answers. no childhood aliens lol

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SenateLaunchScrubbed t1_j8fqk5m wrote

You can't really know how far it is, how large it is, or how fast it's moving. A large object moving very fast very far away will look just like a much smaller object moving much slower much closer to you.

Given your description, it sounds like a plane.

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casc1701 t1_j8fubuz wrote

It was a plane. Blinking color lights are always a plane.

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Andyman0110 OP t1_j8fvdmo wrote

I don't think this is necessarily true. I can post photos I took of the moon vs this object. I can literally see the craters on the moon but I can't make out a single detail on this object other than light. It was also more twinkling colors rather than a proper blinking at intervals. I tried to get a photo of when it appeared red but I got two that are green and one white photo. I really really doubt it's a plane. I know what they look like. It also wouldn't sit an hour in my vision, moving as slowly as it did without changing size or light intensity.

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Fit-Firefighter-329 t1_j8g1kml wrote

Aircraft have a green light on their starboard side, and a red light on their port side, just like ships/boats. It was probably a helicopter off in the distance.

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Andyman0110 OP t1_j8g1rjw wrote

To be honest I'm leaning way more towards jupiter than aircraft.

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Ape_Togetha_Strong t1_j8g2clp wrote

You saw a star.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooeRUOZ0Gi4

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Andyman0110 OP t1_j8g2rjw wrote

Wouldn't a star appear fixed and not moving? It definitely looks like what I was seeing, except for the movement. I was pretty sure no matter what, stars are so far away that they don't move past the horizon of our view. I might be wrong. The app another user suggested I download showed Sirius in the south east but the object I saw was very clearly south west.

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Ape_Togetha_Strong t1_j8g3ou2 wrote

You mean the movement of the star moving below the horizon? Yes... stars move below the horizon.

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Andyman0110 OP t1_j8g41jv wrote

It didn't seem like any of the other ones were also moving beyond the horizon. This one was brighter than anything else in the sky and didn't seem like it was part of any constellation. I'm not an expert I just genuinely am not trying to mark it off as something it isn't. A lot of these answers do provide partial explanations but all of the circumstances together always provides a gap in the suggestions mentioned.

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Ape_Togetha_Strong t1_j8g62jo wrote

Look, you're not doing a great job of saying what exactly is confusing you, so I'm not sure where to start.

The earth spins. That means that all the things in the sky are always moving. The sun sets because the Earth spins. Stars also rise and set just like the sun. The angle they trace through the sky varies depending on where they lie on the celestial sphere. If you're really saying that you don't think it could be a star because you're under the impression that stars don't move below the horizon, then I can assure you they do.

It sounds to me like you saw a star twinkling near the horizon and then setting.

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Andyman0110 OP t1_j8g7eyh wrote

I see, I had made an error in how I worded my question on google and got a different answer. That's my fault.

I was saying I don't think it's a star because (as uneducated as I am on this subject) I look at the stars a lot. I usually don't see something so bright in the sky. Usually Sirius is the brightest but this wasn't in the same direction as Sirius. So I was wondering what could be so bright. It's not like a star could just appear in a day.

It was quite above the horizon. I was parked maybe 50 feet away from the house and the object was way above the house from my point of view and within an hour sunk completely behind the house and horizon. I'm not really sure how to explain it better than that, I can only use comparative measurements.

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space-ModTeam t1_j8hpdze wrote

Hello u/Andyman0110, your submission "I saw something in the sky last night. help with ID?" has been removed from r/space because:

  • Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.

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