# What did I see in the night sky? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 15, 2013, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-i-see-in-the-night-sky/650442 "2013-02-15T22:29:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-i-see-in-the-night-sky/650442/41 "2013-02-17T20:00:23Z")
Or, for that matter, pure psychological hallucination. ---
**Author:** ![sco3tt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@sco3tt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sco3tt)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-i-see-in-the-night-sky/650442/42 "2013-02-17T20:19:52Z")
Is it possible that your memory is off by a few years, and it happened in 1977 instead? And [you were on Tatooine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGfOHT67KXc#t=41s) at the time? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-i-see-in-the-night-sky/650442/43 "2013-02-17T21:12:38Z")
And, of course, all this is assuming that am77494 actually remembers the incident correctly. It’s easy to combine memories of things long in the past into something that couldn’t have happened that way. Consider this thread: > **[Anyone else remember the alternate ending to "Big"?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=109762)** > > I was telling a friend the other day that I remembered the Tom Hanks movie ending different when I was younger. I saw it on video when it first came out and swear there is a different ending. In the version we all have seen, it ends with Josh and... It’s somewhat common for people to combine their memories of the movies _Big_ and _14 Going on 30_ into a single movie and then to insist that they have seen an alternative cut of _Big_ in which the female lead follows the male lead in going back to being young again, so that they see each other in a classroom at the end. People do this because memories don’t work like we sometimes think they do, just as perception (as we argued in this thread) doesn’t work like we think it does. If am77494 had been an adult when this sighting happened and it had been last night, I would be dubious about whether he perceived it correctly. As it is, he was perhaps as young as nine years old and this happened perhaps as long ago as thirty-two years. I’m not accusing him of lying. Human memory is not the perfect tool that people think it is. There’s just no way to say anything at this remove from the event. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-i-see-in-the-night-sky/650442/44 "2013-02-18T15:22:48Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > You are right - I couldn’t tell for sure - here’s some of the reason why I think so : > > 1\> It moved faster than I’ve seen other meteors to move > 2\> It had more of a bluish color than most meteors and it did not get brighter > 3\> It was much smaller in size - comparable to small part of a star (keep in mind the distance) > 4\> It moved “horizontally” in the sky - most meteors I have seen seem to be falling 1. They can appear to move at any speed. They’re going very fast, but can appear to be moving slowly when they’re very far away, or mostly coming at you. If it’s coming directly at you, it seems to be hovering or not moving. 2. As mentioned above, they come in a variety of colors. 3. All stars appear the same size, which is a single point. As you point a bigger telescope at them, they stay the same size. That’s because they’re so far away, they’re essentially infinitesimal to us. The exceptions are planets and galaxies. So, there’s no way it can look smaller than a typical star, other than to be dimmer than a typical star. (Indeed, brighter stars do seem bigger, but they’re not.) I confess that when I look at Jupiter or Saturn in the sky, it looks bigger than a star, but I don’t know whether I’m fooling myself on that. 4. Meteors can appear to move down, up, or sideways, depending on your perspective. Appearances can be very deceiving. If it’s coming in at a shallow angle, towards you but passing over your head, it looks like it’s going straight up, even though it’s falling. Have you seen the videos of the Russian meteor? It’s going horizontally, and amazingly slow! I had no idea a meteor could look like that, but there it is, in several different videos. Your observations don’t seem inconsistent with what’s possible for meteors. Unusual, yes, but inconsistent, no. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2013, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-i-see-in-the-night-sky/650442/45 "2013-02-18T16:11:31Z")
> [@](#): > > I confess that when I look at Jupiter or Saturn in the sky, it looks bigger than a star, but I don’t know whether I’m fooling myself on that. They do. The naked-eye planets are all pretty close to the lower limit of the eye’s resolution, but a tad above it, so you can in fact distinguish between a planet and a point source of the same brightness. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-i-see-in-the-night-sky/650442.md?page=2)