Unidentified Flying Objects

me own eyes | 12-1-1

[jungleboy]

Just witnessed two very fast traveling objects in the sky that had very colorful, streaking objects following them. This WAS NOT meteor activity as the local TV station guessed. These objects came out of the Southwest sky heading Northeast. My wife and I watched them for about one minute as they dissappeared over the horizon. Northeastern Kansas. Anyone else see this?

[isom35]

klingon bird of prey? she has to decloak before she can fire.

[Husker24]

Im in SE Nebraska, they just mentioned it on our local news, they said they had a lot of calls about seeing something. They guessd it was a meteor or sattalite debris, i didnt see it though.

[BluH2o]

Don't get so excited ... you've posted this 3 times!
Easy does it fella ...

[BluH2o]

Don't get so excited ... you've posted this 3 times!
Easy does it fella ...

[jungleboy]

I don't know how this thing got posted three times. Sorry 'bout that folks.

[_Jim]

Just witnessed two very fast traveling objects in the sky that had very colorful, streaking objects following them.

Ever see some of the videos of meteors caught on camera?

Some of those were pretty unreal looking too ...

[Heisenburger]

Aren't there a lot of nuke silos in that area?

Sorry, just hoping...

[Channel_Islands_EANx_Diver]

Squeeze here Tinfoilers

[OldFriend]

F16s scrambling, perhaps.

[ptlurking]

I saw a post on an astronomy forum from someone in Colorado who saw something
similar to your described event.
They thought it to be "space junk" re-entering the atmosphere.

[jungleboy]

No way these were meteors. These unidentified flying objects lasted too long in the sky.

[SEVENCROSS]

My wife and three kids saw it also, here in the Eastern Texas Panhandle, there were at least ten lights with the brightest a brilliant white (looked like a shuttle launch), and the rest were less bright and changed colors from white, to yellow to orange, and varied in intensity.

They traveled SW to NE, and took about two minutes to cross the entire sky. My wife said it was angles, it was something out of this world.

[_Jim]

These unidentified flying objects lasted too long in the sky.

... and SO DID some of these meteors caught on tape ...

It seems that 'pieces' also break off and trail the main chunk too ...

[xp38]

Clearly a time travel episode. They can be easy to write and quite popular with some of the Trekkies.

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

It was just Osama and Mulla Omar on their magic carpets cruising east.

[RightWhale]

I don't know how this thing got posted three times

Happened to me, too, just now on another thread. Internet lockup.

[Gordian Blade]

"white, to yellow, to orange" -- sounds suspiciously like something going through the black-body spectrum as it cools down, like a hot piece of iron in a blacksmith's fire. That would be consistent with some piece(s) of junk entering the atmosphere. If the words, "to red," were added, that would clinch it in my mind.

[linemann]

It seems that 'pieces' also break off and trail the main chunk too Ditto that... my husband reported exactly the same thing.

[linemann]

good point

[moonhawk]

Interesting...I observed something very similar about an hour and fifteen minutes ago (approx 9:00 PM Mountain Time) while traveling home, East out of Albuquerque through Tijeras Canyon.

It was just above the horizon, walls of the Canyon, and seemed to be traveling NE...two objects, at first I thought Helicopters with search lights, flying out of Kirtland AFB...Just didn't get enough of a look to be sure, as they soon were hidden from view by the high walls of the Canyon.

KOB TV just reported many calls of sightings in Santa Fe and say astronomers say it could be meteors or "space junk."

They seemed to have a tail more like a comet, and didn't move anywhere near fast enough to be a shooting star, as I observed them for maybe five or ten seconds, in approximately the same location.

Definitely have to say I couldn't "Identify" them.

[PogySailor]

I know that NASA was talking about separating the mis-aligned supply pod from the space station. Was this it?

[SirChas]

Santa?

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

I know they canceled the missile test this even. But did someone pass that along to the dudes on the other end?

Maybe we just got shot at?

[SEVENCROSS]

There was some red, it was so colorful the kids said it looked like fireworks, and it did look like pieces burned out or trailed off, and others would flare up and change colors.

[Stentor]

Angular shape or movement? Triangular?

[SierraWasp]

What's an "http://www.srtbell.com?"

Use you're left pinkie, not you ringfinger.(grin)

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

And who busted Free Republic?

Where is the breaking news???

[flying Elvis]

You're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy. ; )

[SirChas]

I didn't post this.

[JSteff]

The solution is that once you click "Post" even if it doen't refresh your screen right away, don't click again 'cause it probably did post. I do it often also (impatient)) and try to not do it anymore.

[jungleboy]

These flew over Northeast Kansas at approx. 10:30 Central time. The two lead objects were traveling in tandem. The trailing colorful streaks of light following behind were beautiful.

[SEVENCROSS]

The brighest light was ahead of the other dimmer lights which followed behind on both sides like a flock of geese, with some lights directly behind, there was no definite triangular pattern although. Just a group of beautiful lights moving SW to NE directly over our heads.

[Gordian Blade]

I've been following UFO news off and on since I was a kid. (Longer than I'd like to admit, but not quite back to Roswell.) I'd like to think we aren't alone in the universe, but I haven't seen truly compelling evidence yet. I hope in my lifetime to see astronomers identify a planet of another star that has conditions more similar to earth than any planet in our solar system. That's about as close to finding alien life as I think I'm likely to get, unless something astonishing is found on Mars.

[america76]

Could have been a comet fragment(s). The one I saw over Detroit a few years ago ( I believe 1999, about this time of year) sounds alot like the thing you saw. It streaked from one end of the sky to the other untill it was too far away to be seen. Behind it were broken pieces trailing behind at a slightly slower speed and decending slightly from the line the lead fragment travelled on. It was big and bright and was visible for about 30 seconds as it crossed the sky on a very flat trajectory.

I read about it in the paper the next day. They said it was a comet fragment.

[John H K]

I subscribe to a meteor mailing list and people have reported seeing it from Texas; consensus is it's almost certainly the re-entry of a satellite or space debris.

These pieces, while much, much larger than the rice or pea sized grains of a typical meteor, move much, more slowly, so you'll get a long-lasting trail and assorted pieces breaking off, flaring, etc.

[_Jim]

bttt

[StockAyatollah]

Leave the psilocybin alone!

[jungleboy]

It's that mushroom soup again, eh?

[ladyinred]

Vandenburg was going to launch a rocket sometime this evening, could that possibly be it?

[Davea]

The Vandenberg launch was cancelled due to weather.

[Lady In Blue]

I just checked defenselink.com site and it was postponed until tomorrow evening from 9:00p.m.EST to approximately 1:00a.m. due to poor weather conditions.

[lilsparky]

I don't have the source handy, but seems to me that a Japanese satellite was going to come down sometime soon. I remember that they expected most of it to burn up harmlessly, and at the time of the article weren't even sure of where or when.

[dalebert]

I have seen things like this several times. Never found out what it was.

[John H K]

I just saw the same speculation on the meteorobs mailing list. If this is JERS-1, it came down just a hair earlier than forecast.

http://www.nasda.go.jp/jers1/index_e.html

Re-entry of Japanese Earth Resource Satellite-1 (JERS-1)
The Japanese Earth Resource Satellite-1 (JERS-1) has finished its mission and will soon reentry in December, 2001.

The National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) launched JERS-1 by H-1 Launch Vehicle from Tanegashima Space Center in February, 1992.

JERS-1 is an earth observation satellite whose primary objective is to gather data on global land masses while conducting observation for land surveys, agricultural-forestry-fishieries, environmental protection, disaster prevention and coastal surveillance, with emphasis on locating natural resources. JERS-1 is a joint project of the Science and Technology Agency (STA) / NASDA and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). STA / NASDA were responsible for the main satellite unit and MITI was responsible for the measuring instruments. Since its launching in 1992, the satellite had continued to supply observation data to users in Japan and abroad and ended the mission on October 12, 1998.

NASDA is making an orbital analysis with the cooperation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Japan Spaceguard Association and giving the latest information on this site.

Orbital analysis of JERS-1 NASDA(Tsukuba Space Center)
Orbital analysis as of December 2, 2001

Re-entry date : from 00:00 p.m on December 3 to 03:00 a.m on December 4

(strong possibility : 06:00 p.m on December 3)

[John H K]

All Leonids travel at the exact same (extremely high) speed....it takes a Leonid only a second or two to cross the horizon (and I was fortunate to see a horizon-to-horizon earthgrazer two weeks ago.) Also, the shower is long over and it's not one of the long-lasting ones.

This moved extremely slowly.

[Professor Jim]

Meteors can be in the sky for a few seconds and can seem longer. They can burn, explode, and pop along the way. Once I could even hear the explosion of such a fireball.

Satellites, on the other hand, move more slowly across the sky, taking minutes usually. They usually look sort of like planets but move visibly.

Comets have tails, but do not appear to move in the sky.

If the descriptions are accurate, these objects had the speed of a satellite, but the appearance of a fireball meteor. Thus, returning obiting space junk is by far the likeliest explanation.

[hmmmmm]

Yes! I was beginning to think I was nuts *l*. I saw them also in the KC metro. They appeared to be quite a number of planes (could the color have been from afterburners?). They were moving from basically the southwest to the northeast in a level, straight line. I ran outside to get a better look. At first glance they appeared to be 2 orange streaks, when I got outside I could see what appeared to be planes and they were somewhat staggered, my count was about 15-20. At the end there was 1 plane in the middle of the 2 streaks, I could see the contrails on it. Within the next few minutes there were several more planes at fairly regular intervals. I sure would like to know exactly what it was.

[The Bolt]

I've seen something similar before on a couple of occasions, however I was in a mental ward within a couple of days, so that don't count. Ha! Just kidding. What were you thinking at the moment you saw this fleeting apparition, if you don't mind my asking? Brain wave dependant phenomenon are not uncommon.