Full Description & Details

I was waiting for sputnik to come by in about 15 minutes when I seen this bright object in southern part of sky brighter than the star sirius. At first I thought it was light from a plane but all of a sudden I looked away than looked back and it was gone. I than laid down on the grass waiting for sputnik and than looking up the bright light was straight up. I went over to my 6" newtonian telescope and was looking at it. It was round but what was odd was I didn't turn on my drive for the telescope and the object didn't move so it wasn't a star. Eveyone that looked at it asked me when they were looking at it that other lights were moving past it and the bright light didn't move. That is when I told them the motor wasn't turned on what they saw was stars moving through the field of view because the scope drive wasn't turned on so the stars would move through the field of view. When it was my turn to look again I looked into the eyepiece and the object was gone when I looked up it was gone and one of the people said look here comes sputnik Just for the heck of it I keep looking into the eyepiece and low and behold sputnik whet right through the the center of the field of view of the eyepiece. What I could get out of this was that whatever that thing was was viewing sputnik coming at it and when it got close it just vanished. When the object disapeared no one was looking straight up at the time so no one actualy seen it disapear. A couple of people saw it move from south to straight up in just a matter of a second. Because it was straight up when I was looking at it with the telescop at about 250 power all I could see was the bottom of it and it was round that was for sure no lights just reflection from sun shineing on it. Today I own a 12 1/2" newtonian set up to do photography and wish I could see something like that now that I could put on film. John

Witness Background

Astronomer using a 6" newtonian telescope

Other Comments

What I seen was real mainly because I know the stars and it was brighter than any star in the sky and what I saw was moving at the same speed as the rotation of the earth to stay is the field of view of the telescope when the right ascension and declination shafts were in lock position not allowing the scope to move in any direction. Kind of Sacary when you see something like this and can't explain it.

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