NUFORC Sighting 76266

Occurred: 2010-07-04 23:00 Local
Reported: 2010-07-07 15:24 Pacific
Duration: 1 hour
No of observers: 2

Location: Orland, CA, USA

Shape: Flash
Characteristics: Lights on object

Satellites that flash and then disappear and ones that change direction.

My husband and I live in a rural town 100 miles north of Sacramento. We like to stargaze and took our recliners out into the pasture where we could get a good view of the entire night sky. We had our radio. This was at 10pm sometime between 10 and midnight we saw three strange flashes. There were three incidences: two we both saw and one my husband alone saw.

The first one my husband alone saw. He said what he saw was an extremely bright flash of light, right between the two bottom stars of the big dipper. By time he said "oh wow!" and pointed, it had disappeared. It wasn't streaking like a meteor. He said it just got bright and disappeared.

A while later, maybe 20 minutes to a half hour later I was watching a satellite cross the sky. I pointed it out to my husband, "I see one!". It was directly in front of us. We both were watching it. As it crossed, it suddenly got extremely bright. So bright the light from it almost hurt my eyes the way high beams from an oncoming car would. It lasted no more than two seconds and them dimmed. After it dimmed you could no longer see the satellite at all. I thought maybe it had burned up in space. There wasn't an object to track across the sky any longer. I thought maybe because of the brightness I just couldn't see it anymore, but it was really gone! My husband said that was what he had seen earlier.

We saw a third one which wasn't nearly as bright as the first one I had witnessed. The third one happened the same way. Visually tracking a satellite across the sky, this one was further to our North (our right hand side, our chairs were facing West).

It brightened, then disappeared completely from the sky.

After hearing reports on the radio last night, July 6th, about others seeing something unusual, I was compelled to write. We sat out briefly last night and something unusual again.

At around 10:20 we saw the same thing again. While tracking a satellite across the sky we saw it brighten significantly and then disappear. This was not as bright as the first one I saw on July fourth.

Maybe 15 minutes later we both saw what looked like two satellites traveling North one behind the other quite close (I have NEVER seen that before). We watched as the one behind then gradually changed direction heading East as the first one continued North.

I am 52 years old. I don't drink and I have been watching satellites cross the night sky since my early twenties when a friend pointed them out to me while camping. I know the difference between a high flying plane and a satellite. I have watched hundreds of satellites cross the sky and I have NEVER EVER seen this kind of thing before. I have watched them disappear behind the Earth's shadow but nothing as strange as this.

Posted 2010-07-10