Last Thursday I was on the commuter boat heading across Boston Harbor under a virtually cloudless sky. It was about 5:00 P.M. and the sun was behind me as I faced eastward over the Atlantic. Logan airport was nearby and I was watching planes takeoff, land, fly overhead, etc. I looked straight up and saw what I thought was a small fighter that had to be at least 50,000 ft. high. It was just a tiny white dot heading east over the ocean. Then I started wondering if it might have been a satellite. I couldn’t see any detail, just a dim white dot and I quickly lost sight of it as the sky became lighter towards the horizon.
I saw the exact same thing about 10 min. later. Same area of the sky. Exact same direction. Seemed like the same speed, too. Also, as I was watched it progress, I noticed a 747 coming in the opposite direction almost head on with the dot. The airliner was obviously an international flight and was at cruising altitude(40-50K ft.?). Now, even if the ‘dot’ was a fighter at 60K ft., I would think it would deviate it’s course so that it’s not flying head on with a 747 even if it was 10-20K ft. higher.
So, has anybody ever seen a satellite during the day? Is it possible? How 'bout MIR or the Space Station? I’m pretty sure the shuttle wasn’t up there at the time.
And remember, this is in GQ. I DO NOT believe this was an alien craft and I don’t want this to turn into a debate about whether aliens exist or not.
Thanks in advance,
Van
I should think that it would not be possible for a sattelite to be seen during the day.
I have looked for Venus during the day while I was visiting an Observatory on an Undergraduate field trip - we found it on the 1.2m refracting telescope, but it was almost impossible to see with the naked eye. Our Prof claimed that he could see it, but I certainly couldn’t…
Since Venus is generally much brighter than your average sattelite, I shouldn’t think that you would be able to see one in daylight. Dunno what you did see…
In general you would not be able to see a satelite with the naked eye in daylight. The light coming from the atmosphere is simply too strong. Under the right conditions it’s possibleto see them though. Quoting from this site:
You most certainly can see some satellites in daylight. The Iridium constellation’s birds are known for their spectacular flashes, some as bright as magnitude -8 if you happen to be directly under the flare. It is possible that you saw something other than an iridium though, since their flashes are brief
This is a good sat. visibility page that give data for the iridium sats for both day and night, and a great deal more. Chris Peat’s Heavens-Above.
Thanks for the input, everyone… Another possible explanation just occurred to me… Don’t they launch weather balloons and other weather measuring instruments into the Jet Stream? I wonder if that is what I was seeing.
When I was younger I watched the sky for satellites, probably due to a lack of tv. One evening I counted 37 satellites before dark. I don’t know if I’ve seen even one in the last 10 years, though, so my average isn’t anything to brag about. Anyway, under the right circumstances you can definitely see satellites while it is still daylight.
To add to the others, I’ve seen Iridium flares in the broad daylight. You can only see them during the most intense part of the flare, and that lasts about two seconds if you’re lucky. If you saw something for an extended period of time, it was probably a very high airplane.
Ok - I saw something similar recently. While looking up into a bright blue sky during the middle of the day, I noticed a tiny white dot. The only thing I could think of was, as you postulated, a balloon, possibly a weather balloon. It didn’t seem to move and after about 5 minutes, I lost sight of it. In this thread, there’s nothing more plausible, I fear. I’ll stay tuned.
Van Landry, you obviously have seen the High Altitude Vehicle that NASA used to take pictures of the moon’s surface, so they could superimpose pictures of astronauts on…o.k., I’ll stop now.
Yah I was on the charles river docks and I saw that dot of light moving slowly south southeast
flicker very brightly at times. It had to be much much higher then any commercial airliner.
You can see Venus in daytime and I have read it is possible to follow it all day, although I haven’t done that. One morning in Oct. 1999 Venus was high in the sky and very bright. I left my house a bit before 7 and it was spectacularly bright. As I walked to my office (a distance of about 4 miles), I followed it. The sun rose at 7:35 and I could still see it, although if I lost it behind a cloud it was hard to find again once the sun rose. But I followed it all the way till around 8:25 I had to go inside for my 8:30 class. At one point, there was an odd illusion. It got covered by a wispy cloud, but I could still see Venus behind the cloud. Except it was almost impossible to overcome the illusion that Venus was in front of the cloud.
Both of the mystery objects could have been outbound interncontinental commercial jets at max crusing altitude. High enough to diminish the appearance of wings + no contrail + flying in a standard air corridor would result in something just like what you report. Your “747” could have been an incoming jet that was at a lower altitude because it was nearing its destination.
Judging the height or distance of objects in the sky is quite difficult. Bright objects can seem much closer than they are.
A few weeks back we were sitting outside with friends at dusk when I saw the Int’l Space Station passing over (confirmed it later). A friend who can’t be told anything said that “that plane sure looks funny”. After telling her that it looked to me like the ISS (no flashing lights, no contrail, unusual flight direction for our area), she said “Oh, it’s way too low and too slow for the space station.” I tried for a minute or two, but finally gave up trying to pursuade her that it wasn’t a really weird plane.
