h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

While watching out for meteors last night we saw a light in the sky which we can't explain.

When stargazing up into the night sky around the area of Draco we looked away for a moment and looked back as we thought we saw a meteor.

What we saw was a bright light that I figured was just a star that had been obscured by cloud as it was so very bright. While watching it it got brighter and larger, then all of a sudden got fainter and then appeared to travel (yes, travel!) away at speed, fading in size and brightness until it was gone.

I explained it away as a satellite at the time, but its trajectory was all wrong. And it wasn't a plane or helicopter because, well, it wasn't.

Someone having a sneaky visit perhaps??

Too cloudy to look for meteors here. What was the trajectory?

TRiG.

Trajectory was straight, rather than curving in an orbit

We saw something very similar and Spouse said it must have been a satellite.

Not having a clue about these things, I accepted this explanation.

doo doo doo doo.......

I'm actually jealous. I want to see a UFO!

I don't know what the light is, but I just had to pop in and change the subject title. Sorry.

B

It's the military. It's always the military, unless it's the CIA. They're hiding top secret experiments from us...

Either that, or it's one of Pailaway's extraterrestrials out for a spin.

Oops. *changes subject back again*

That MB

from posts I've put in another thread

did you see any meteor's last night, me and our David stood out till about 1.30am and saw about 5/6 and 4 UFO's, 3 could have and probably were high flying planes, but the other to erratic for plane and to high for helicopter.

honest, at first we said plane, but it was "swaying" side to side and it seemed to keep stalling in the forward direction ? so we counted out plane/helicopter and satellite = only UFO left

true, I'd have put it down to my eyes playing tricks, until David said look how it's wobbling about, the pilots drunk

Jules - Our UFO we would have spotted about, oo, um between 11.30 and 12.15, not sure on exact time

It was such a clear night, we had a few high flying birds we thought were something else for a while, but then we heard them quacking

Meteor count=about 8 or 9, the last 3 in quick succession at about 0130.

3 we saw, seemed to be on the same flight path, but the ufo one, was totally in a different direction, all at high altitude, so no engine noises

I saw something similar.

It came out from behind a cloud, moving at some speed, seeming to go up and up, every now and then stopping, then starting. At one point, it's path was all zig-zaggy.

It was too small and far away looking to be a plane, and too uneven in its flightpath to be a satellite or a star seeming to move because the cloud was.

It had to be something else...

Maybe it was a giant shiney flying hoover in the sky...

It seems that a certain percentage of observers have seen UFOs and we ought to be able to apply Occam's razor, viz:

It is safe to assume that a certain percentage of observers will have also been tiddly.

Now then, the proper question is whether the two groups are actually the same group.

On the other hand, we could apply Occam's Towel - the warm fuzzy one. Namely that the best explanation is whichever one we prefer. Hey it's a huge universe, anything that can happen probably does. So, all the zigging and zagging? I'm with post #13 - I say that there's not only aliens, but a certain percentage are tiddly.



(good viewing tonight - last night too )

(although I didn't get out early enough to see the aliens - they fly out of roswell like bats at dusk)

http://www.godandscience.org/love/galaxies.html