NUFORC Sighting 38777

Occurred: 2004-08-19 22:55 Local
Reported: 2004-08-21 03:40 Pacific
Duration: 3-4 MINUTES
No of observers: 2

Location: Greenwater (near, by Mt. Rainier), WA, USA

Shape: Formation

Triangular light formations by Mt. Rainier

My friend and I are amature astronomers and we often like to take our telescopes to the relatively dark skies around Mt. Rainier. On the night of 8-19-04 while we were setting up our scopes and checking on the sky condition we noticed what appeard to be two satelites slowly moving together so we grabbed our binoculars to take a closer look. In the binoculars we could see a third light in the formation. The lights moved in a tight isosceles triangle formation about two degrees across with the sharpest angle at the front. Stars could be seen unaffected inside the formation. There was no sound. The lights moved across the sky in a northwest to southeast direction and maintained their exact positions in the formation. After traveling about 45 degrees across the sky the lead light disappeared followed by the other two lights that disappeared together exactly at the same line in space where the first light disappeared. This is the second time we have observed this type of phenomenon by Mt. Rainier. The first time occurred August 12,2001 3:20am. That sighting was similar to this one except that there were two lights moving in a south to north direction with the third member of the formation catching up to the first two lights it than slowed down and moved over towards the second of the two lights and then all three lights moved northward together maintaining their exact positions to each other. The formation continued to traveled northward for about 5 min. until we could'nt see it anymore with our binoculars.

NUFORC Note:

We suspect the objects may have been the satellites thought by us to be part of the U.S.Navy "NOSS" satellite system. PD

Posted 2004-08-24