Occurred: 2010-10-03 20:00 Local
Reported: 2010-10-08 18:06 Pacific
Duration: 30 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Bloomington, IL, USA

Shape: Light


Light traveling at high altitude flaring into a bright "star" then fading again

Every evening I take my dog out into the backyard and check out the stars while the dog does his business. On clear nights I try to spot satellites and track them as far as I can (a habit I had since I was a kid). On this night, I spotted what looked like a typical fuzzy blueish satellite traveling slowly accross the center of the sky from south to north. As the light headed north it grew brighter then "flared" into a very bright diamond shape for about 5 seconds. Then, the light dimmed as it traveled and returned to the fuzzy dot and continued on it's path. Theres a large, very bright star/planet in the southern sky at that time of night and I would say the brightness was the same.

I had the impression of something entering our atmosphere for a moment, then leaving on the same path since it never burned out like a shooting star. At no point did the light change speed or it's trajectory.

I would also like to mention that I saw something similar to the Bloomington report on 5/11/10. However, I thought it was closer to 10pm. I'm not sure what the person is referring to as the "right" side of the sky, but what I saw was red/orange light travelling slightly southwest direction. It was moving about the same speed of a commercial jet, however it was single bright light with no strobes that you would expect to see on a jet. There was no sound, however it came to an almost immediate stop directly above, faded, then disappeared. I would even describe the fading as if the object rose directly up as it disappeared because it grew smaller as it faded.

Posted 2010-11-21

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