There’s never an astronomer around when you need one!
I’m in central WA and it’s a;most 2300. There is something that looks like a star, but it flickers in different colors. It doesn’t move like an airplane but is gradually descending in the West. When I first saw this it was (estimate) the width of two palms (held at arms length) above the horizon. It halved that distance above the horizon in about 45 minutes.
The people that pointed it out to me said they have seen it many times although its position varies with the season. So, what the heck could it be? The colors are very pure, like lasers or something and it flickers between red, green and blue. I keep thinking it must be something man-made as opposed to an astronomical object but there’s that part about its position varying with the seasons. I took a look through a cheap pair of binoculars but it was still just a flickering dot, no disc or other shape to it.
There’s no planets in that part of the sky, so you’re probably seeing a satellite. Many tumble as they move through space, and the different albedo make them look all kinds of funny like blinking, different colors, etc.
Thanks. That was my first thought as well but I guess I expected a different sort of motion, much faster travel through the sky. Still, I certainly can’t think of anything else it could be so that must be it.
It won’t be a satellite, they zip across the sky in a couple of minutes or less.
Could it be Arcturus? Whenever stars are close to the horizon they start to suffer a lot of flicker and distortion due to atmospherics, and look unusually large or bright due to being closer to recognisable landscape features.
It was actually quite high in the sky when we started looking at it and very bright as well. I understand what you’re saying about the motion though, that is what I would expect from a satellite as well.
I’m having trouble working out the rate of descent, but was it just descending to the horizon at the same rate as the rest of the stars in the sky? Certainly the description sounds just like a bright planet - either Venus or Jupiter, but Venus was not visible at that time and Jupiter was rising in the east, not setting in the west. The fact that it was still just a “flickering dot” through binoculars strongly suggests a star or planet.
A look at the sky charts on Heavens Above shows that Mars was setting in the west a few hours before that, but only just after sunset so that can’t have been it.
The only bright object in roughly the right place seems to be - as GuanoLad suggested - Arcturus (in Boötes), which is the third brightest star in the sky. I’m about 80% sure that’s what you saw. Have a look again tonight if it’s clear and see if the “arc” of the handle of the plough points towards the mystery object. If so, it’s Arcturus.
Nitpick: Arcturus is actually the fifth brightest star as seen from Earth. fourth if one excludes the Sun. It’s the second brightest star in the night sky, after Sirius, for much of the U.S. “Third brightest” is true only for those far enough south to see Canopus but not, of course, far enough south to also see Alpha Centauri.
I’d say what you saw has to be Arcturus. The motion you describe was the rate of a star or planet, not any sort of satellite. At that point, Arcturus was the only very bright thing anywhere in that part of the sky. And it really stands out for being so isolated.
Two palm’s height over the horizon is about 35 degrees, and at 2300 in Yakima, Arcturus was 32 degrees up, almost due west. Sounds a lot like your description to me.
I take that back…Arcturus was 32 degrees up in your sky when it was 2300 my time. I forgot to account for the time zone change when using Stellarium.
But now that I re-read the OP, i see that the two-palms distance was well before 2300. So still, i think you were seeing Arcturus. Nothing else makes any sense.
Thank you for all the help and suggestions. We’re ready for a return match with this thing tonight and I’ll try to get a better handle on its rate of motion. Maybe I am just too adapted to living in large urban areas but that seemed very bright for a star. I’m getting on the heavens-above site now so if it IS Arctarus maybe we can track it better.
Anyway, more info this evening!
Thanks to you all and I’ll get back to you this evening.
I’m in Victoria, BC, and I see your object all the time; it’s a familiar thing I tend to look for. I’ve always assumed it was a star, but haven’t gotten around to finding out which one. I thought of it as the “Christmas” star, because for me, it flickers in decided red and green colours. It’s quite pretty.
Arcturus is very bright for a star. And all the more so because everything around it is rather dim.
That said, if this thing you’re seeing really is moving relative to the stars, then it’s either a planet, a satellite, or an alien spacecraft. Planets don’t move relative to the stars fast enough to see in a single night (and they’re all along the ecliptic plane, too), so that leaves satellites and ufos. While most satellites move pretty quickly, there’s no rules that I know of that they can’t move slowly by being in a higher orbit (technically they’d be moving faster, but the movement in degrees/time elapsed as viewed from the ground would be slower). Somewhere between the geosynch orbits and standard LEOs there’s a place for any apparent speed you’d like.
Stars twinkle, a process called scintillation. A star is almost a perfect point source and all light from a star is following a single path to your eye. Atmospheric effects cause the the image of the star to vary in brightness, position, and colour. The colour effect is more apparent with a brighter star and can be quite stunning.
If you live in a city and have little opportunity to star gaze you simply might not have noticed it before.
Planets have an apparent diameter and their light travels through multiple paths to your eye. One of the simple rules for distinguishing a planet from a star is that planets tend not to flicker and appear more steady.
Satellites have a very notable smooth, steady motion unlike anything else in the sky. They do change in brightness as the sun hits them from different angles. I haven’t seen them twinkle like a star ever.
Testy: I’ll recommend the software/program called Stellarium (free/open-source) to aid in ID’ing things in the ‘heavens’. Its a great prog, and has most things celestial listed/shown that you would find above you (night or day). Stellarium has helped me ID many a planet/star. IIRC, it does not deal with man-made satellites - which heavens-above website does quite well (I use both when needed, fwiw). HTH you figure this out And there are other software packages, too, but Stellarium got my attention right away for its ease-of-use and level of real-time detail)
If you have access to an Android phone, download the free Google Sky Map and just point the phone at the object. You’ll see on the phone’s screen the name of what you are looking at.
And all the more so because everything around it is rather dim.
And there are other software packages, too, but Stellarium got my attention right away for its ease-of-use and level of real-time detail)