NUFORC Sighting 38590

Occurred: 2003-10-17 22:00 Local
Reported: 2004-08-11 11:11 Pacific
Duration: 5 seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: State College, PA, USA

Shape: Other

Object observed on infrared camera.

Knowing that this might be a little late to report, but I never really thought about reporting it. Last fall I was with a friend of mine who works at Goddard Space Center. He and his supervisor were giving a seminar on LIDAR, and how it is used to record meteorological data. They brought with them a trailer that houses the LIDAR, among other equipment.

The next evening my friend invited me to see the trailer. He hooked up an infrared camera located at the rear of the trailer. We were able to observe the density of clouds with the camera that was connected to a black and white monitor inside. The sky was generally clear with a few high cirrus clouds.

As my friend was working, I was watching the monitor. I began to see small points of light zip through the field of view. I told him to take a look, but he said I was just seeing things. Only after he happened to see one of these points of light did he believe me.

We watched for more points for several minutes on the monitor, and more came into view. Whatever we were seeing was going in a perfectly straight line from upper left to lower right. After we saw several more of these, we came to a concensus that what we were seeing were nothing more than satellites in orbit.

A few moments had passed and we both looked at the monitor, and observed another point of light. However, this one came about halfway into the field of view, paused, and went back into the direction from which it came. My friend and I both looked at each other, kind of nervously laughed, and said to each other, "I did NOT just see that!" My friend put a tape into the VCR which was connected to the monitor, but unfortunately, it was a time-lapse tape. We watched for another hour or so, and more points of light came into view, but no other point made a retrograde motion like the one mentioned.

Satellites do not retrograde, and while I thought that this might be a bird, I remember that ALL of these objects came from the exact same direction. I would consent to a return e-mail or phone call. I am curious to know whether or not people view images like this on infrared very often or not.

Posted 2004-08-11