NUFORC Sighting 8273

Occurred: 1999-07-06 22:40 Local
Reported: 1999-07-06 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 2-3min
No of observers: 1

Location: Pasco, WA, USA

Shape: Flash
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object

At about 10:40pm I was walking home from work and saw a bright fast moving satelite moving from the south to the north. It was traveling fast enough to cover a quarter of the sky in about 6 seconds. It was the fastest satelite I have ever seen, so it caught my interest and I immediately thought it may have been a missle. It's path was nearly directly overhead about 75 to 80 degrees above the horizon to the west. About 1 min after I lost visual contact with the object to the north, there was a bright star that appeared in the sky about 60 to 70 degrees above the horizon and about 5 degrees north from direct east. It appeared in the constelation south east of Cassiopea. This Bright Star was 2-3 time brighter than anything in the sky, about the intesity of aircraft landing lights.

It was so briliant that I immediately thought that a new supernova had just been seen, but the brightness faded and the star dissapeared after about 1 min. Because of the coincedence of the events I surrmise that they were connected. My gut feeling is that the bright Flash may have been in response to the very quick satelite Moving from the south to the north. A Star Wars defence mechanism or simmilar devise. It was the strangest thing I have seen in the sky for a long time, hopefully someone else can verify the existance of this bright flash object.

Posted 1999-07-14