Hello everyone, I recently witnessed a bright light moving across the sky. No beacon lights. Speed was no faster than a passenger plane. It was brighter than a satillite. The object was easily noticable the moment it came in my view. It moved, unchanged for about 10 seconds and then slowly faded to disappear. I'd say both were 75° degrees from the horizon. Tonight was the second time I have witnessed this light. The first was about 3 weeks ago. I saw it again tonight and it prompted me to look for an explanation. The first night, the object moved Southeast to Northwest. Tonight it moved North to South. The magnitude and speed were similar. Forgive me, I can't remember the exact date of the first sighting, exept it was about 3 weeks ago. I do know it was after 10pm. The second was tonight, 12/5/2015. Between 7p and 7:30p. New Madison, Ohio Any help is appriciated. Thank you.
You saw the international space station. It was visible on Dec 5 from 7:08 to 7:11 from New Madison. It is quite impressive. You can find out when the ISS is visible (and lots of other cool info) at heavens-above.com. Keep looking up.
Ahhh! Thanks for the information. Me and my girlfriend thought about that being the explanation. It was the light fading that struck me as odd. So we counted it out.
I would say that a sighting that only lasted 10 seconds is more likely to be an Iridium Flare, but either way, a satellite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare And you can go here and enter your information to positively identify it: http://www.heavens-above.com/
If it's a satellite it will tend to turn reddish before it fades out due to the effect of the atmosphere on the sunlight hitting the satellite.
