NUFORC Sighting 146978

Occurred: 2019-06-21 22:45 Local
Reported: 2019-06-21 20:31 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Fayetteville, NC, USA

Shape: Unknown


Flashing from a possible satellite tumbling on its arc.

Took my dog out for his last night potty run about 10:45 pm tonight. I always look up at the stars at night as it was something Dad and I used to do when I was growing up. He was an engineer, designing early communication satellites, and I know quite a few of his designs are above us, circling the Earth. Dad taught me how to identify a planet as opposed to a star, and how to track the satellites when they go overhead.

Tonight, I caught a glimpse of a flash of white light out of the corner of my eye traveling from the west to the east/southeast sky above the star Altair (used my Sky Guide app to figure its location), then dismissed it as I thought it was a light of an airplane high overhead. We are under the flight lines for our local airport and the nearby military base. I looked to the south and then back over where I saw the light and saw a smaller glimmer of it. Continued watching that area of the sky and it flashed again and again, somewhat in a predictive sequence about 2-3 seconds in between each flash and the duration of the flash was a fraction of a second which made it very hard to predict where it was going. When it flashed again, this time it was like a streamer flying in the wind with a 1-2 second duration and then it disappeared, only to quickly flash again a few more times before the light dimmed out of sight.

I do not believe it is a UFO craft. I believe I saw a satellite which may have been knocked so it's spinning while in orbit and caught the sun reflecting off its solar panels (the flashing light) instead of a steady glow which moves in an arc across the night sky. The flashing light was still traveling as if it were following a satellite arc, that's how I could guess where to look when I realized it wasn't an airplane flying overhead.

Just wondered if anyone else had seen the same thing tonight. Pretty interesting!

Posted 2019-06-27

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