Expert: James Gort - 1/8/2007

Question
Thank you for getting back to me witht the battery of answers.   This occurred late in the evening, around 10pm.   Although I would have loved this to have been an astronomical phonom, I have been told that this event may have been more militaristic than natural.   It seems my location also allowed for some interesting light shows from Vandenberg A.F.B.  It seems that in the 1960's and 70's, there was considerable missle activity from the base.   I was told today that what I saw might have been a missle exploding in the upper atmosphere.  This makes sense, but isn't quite as glamorous as a star exploding.  

Thanks again for your reply.   

David

-----Answer-----
Hello David,

This is a pretty difficult one, but I'll do my best.  First of all, I can confirm what it was not.  I guarantee that it wasn't a supernova, or even a nova.  These things are pretty rare, and most are telescopic objects.  There was one naked eye supernova in 1604, and another in 1987.  But they're usually only seen every couple hundred years.  So if what you saw was a supernova, it would have been seen and written about by astronomers around the world.  So we can really rule that out.

If you saw the object in the southern sky, I would have proposed it being one of the bright planets.  They can often change appearance as the atmosphere changes.

But in the northern sky at that time of year and time of night, there aren't too many bright stars.  Deneb (in Cygnus) and Capella (in Auriga) are possibilities, since these can also change appearance due to certain atmospheric phenomenon (such as high translucent clouds).

So I'll have to ask a few more question.  Was it directly to the north, or more NE or NW?  Were there any clouds that you can remember?  When you say "late evening", was it around 11:00 pm?  Did it stay pretty stationary for the several hours you observed it?  Was your bedroom window closed or open?

As I said, it's a difficult one, but I would guess (and it's only a guess) that it wasn't something from a star's distance, or even a planet's distance.  I would guess that it was either an unusual atmospheric phenomenon, or (if your bedroom window was closed), even a reflection off the glass that made it appear to be an object in the sky.  Many people are actually fooled by that one.

So you don't really have a definitive answer, other than I'm confident it wasn't a supernova.  I hope that sheds a little light on the mystery, though.

Prof. James Gort

Answer
Hello David,

That makes sense, if it wasn't seen by you for a couple of hours.  Perhaps the military is covering up something!! :-)

I say that only half facetiously.  One of my former teachers was Dr. J. Allan Hynek, chairman of the Dept. of Astronomy at Northwestern University and scientific director of the Air Force's Project Blue Book (for 20 years).  He coined the expression Close Encounters of the First, Second, and Third Kind (and was scientific advisor to the movie).  He investigated countless sightings (like yours) and some could not be explained by any known science (or human activity).  Just to give you additional food for thought!

Prof. James Gort