NUFORC Sighting 24787

Occurred: 2002-08-30 21:30 Local
Reported: 2002-08-31 06:13 Pacific
Duration: 5 seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: Somerset, MA, USA

Shape: Unknown

I was sitting on my patio last night with a friend of mine when I suddenly noticed a light in the sky. It slowly appeared; maybe 2 or 3 seconds. I told my friend and she noticed it too. I think the light appeared in the southeast direction at about 65 degrees. The light was very bright, fairly large (much bigger than a star or shooting star), white, and perfectly round. At first we thought it was a headlight to a plane that was low but realized there was no sign of a plane (i.e., noise, blinking lights, etc.) The light seemed to look like a headlight on some aircraft that was flying fairly low.

When we were both looking at it, it seemed to peak in brightness - as if the light were shinging very close to us - like a spotlight. It then dimmed from very bright to nothing in the next 2-3 seconds. I think the dimming was the light source turning to the right and then away. When it was turning to the right, we were able to still track the dimming light for about 10 degrees to the right then the light completely disappeared. We continued to look in that direction for the next 20-30 minutes and never saw anything else other than the usual stars and planes.

There was never any noise, any other lights attached to it, and never saw any shape of the object other than the light itself. The weather was clear and calm. It was too far away to have been an aircraft to have had had bright of a light shining from it.

While we continued to look for any other lights, we discussed what we saw. We both described the same thing and hopefully my description explains what we saw.

((

NUFORC Note:

We suspect the flare from an Iridium satellite may have been the cause of the sighting. Please see the following URL for clarification:

http://heavens-above.com/iridium.asp?lat=41.769&lng=-71.129&alt=8&loc=Somerset&TZ=EST&Date=37497.6363333333&Dur=2

A flare occurred at 21:23 hrs. at 86 degrees azimuth and 44 degrees angle of elevation.

PD))

Posted 2002-09-06