NUFORC Sighting 119719

Occurred: 2015-06-22 22:50 Local
Reported: 2015-06-23 08:08 Pacific
Duration: 3:00
No of observers: 2

Location: Champlin, MN, USA

Shape: Unknown

Oval shaped "cloud" mass moving through sky on a clear night.

While observing Northern Lights, we (2 people) saw a large oval shaped mass of what appeared to be clouds, moving slowly across the sky directly overhead. It looked as if the “clouds” were surrounding something slowly moving through the sky but we were unable to see any specific object.

It was moving slower than a commercial plane and appeared to be at a high altitude. No lights could be seen coming from the mass. The mass was large, almost as if a spotlight was shining in the sky but there were no clouds in the sky to be observed.

It was moving in a very straight north westerly direction and eventually dissipated in the distance.

One thought was that something was reflecting down on the atmosphere from space, like a reverse spotlight, such as the space station but in checking online the space station was not in our area.

((NOTE FROM MR. TED MOLCZAN))

Hello Peter,

Your hunch probably is correct.

The Sentinel 2A satellite was launched on a Vega rocket from the Guiana Space Center, last night at 9:52 PM EDT (Jun 23
01:52 UTC).

Coverage of the launch was here:

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/22/vv05-mission-status-center/

SeeSat-L received several reports of sightings near 23:49 EDT (3:49 UTC), of what appears to have been exhaust from the final burn of the Vega rocket's AVUM liquid fueled upper stage. That burn lowered the perigee to ensure that the object decays from orbit within a reasonable time, in order to curb the growth of space debris.

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0193.html

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0194.html

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0195.html

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0198.html

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0199.html

Marco Langbroek blogged his analysis:

http://sattrackcam.blogspot.nl/2015/06/aurora-hunter-images-last-moments-of.html

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Best regards,
Ted

((END NOTE))

NUFORC Note:

Out-gassing event of spent rocket. PD

Posted 2015-06-24