NUFORC Sighting 58721

Occurred: 2007-09-13 19:20 Local
Reported: 2007-09-13 19:53 Pacific
Duration: 35 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Santa Fe, NM, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Changed Color, Aircraft nearby

motionless bright lights dimmed and disappeared with the sundown

I do T’ai Chi at dawn and dusk of every day, outside on my patio. This evening, as I started my workout just after sundown, I noticed two bright star-like objects to the west, about 15-18 degrees above the horizon. One object was extremely bright, perhaps magnitude -2 or -3, and resembled a brighter-than-normal planet Venus. About 10 or 12 degrees to the south of it, at the same height above the horizon, was a lesser light, but still bright, about magnitude -1 or 0. The larger, brighter light was blue-white in color, like Venus, and the smaller was an orange-red, like Mercury when it is visible.

My first thought was, “oh, what a beautiful Mercury/Venus display!” But then I realized that I had seen Venus this morning at dawn, rising ahead of the Sun! As I had this realization, the smaller light dimmed and disappeared, within about 5 seconds, without changing position relative to the horizon.

I continued to watch the brighter object, and marked it’s position relative to the horizon using some tree branches that were off to one side that allowed me to sort of triangulate the light’s position.

Several airplane contrails were visible nearby, illuminated by the sunset. These came and went while the object remained still.

Over the course of the next 35 minutes, the light did not move relative to the horizon in the slightest. However it also, though much more slowly, dimmed in brightness and turned more and more red, until, once twilight had ended and it was completely dark, it was orange instead of blue-white and perhaps magnitude 6 or 7. A few minutes later it became completely non-visible. Up to the point it was no longer visible, it did not move.

NUFORC Note:

Possible sighting of Jupiter?? PD

Posted 2007-10-08