NUFORC Sighting 117775

Occurred: 2015-03-12 22:00 Local
Reported: 2015-03-13 08:13 Pacific
Duration: 10-15 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Stevensville, MT, USA

Shape: Other


Growing concentric clouds with object moving in the center of the clouds very very slowly.

A circular cloud growing to double concentric circular clouds with a yellow/orange colored object in the center of the cloud. Radius of cloud approximately between 5 to 10 moon diameters at maximum extent.

Object moved with cloud and cloud became fainter and larger over a period off 15 min but could still follow faint colored object as it moved very very slowly across the star background. Sighting occurred first east of the star, Sirus and moved north east in the sky. Thought initially it was a supernova but could see an object in center of cloud move with 10x50 binoculars.




((ADDENDUM FROM MR. TED MOLCZAN, OF SEESAT-L))

Hello Peter,

The fuel dump from the Centaur stage of last night's Atlas V launch, was widely visible to the unaided eye from N. America. It began on Mar 13 at about 04:15 UTC, and was visible for about an hour.

Ed Cannon, a long-time member of SeeSat-L, described his sighting as follows:

http://satobs.org/seesat/Mar-2015/0143.html

The Centaur was on a high-elevation pass, that moved west to east across the southern sky. It climbed in altitude from about 2,500 km to more than 20,000 km, on its way to its apogee of about 70,000 km.

Best regards,
Ted Molczan

((END ADDENDUM))

NUFORC Note:

We suspect the sighting is due to a fuel dump from an expended "Centaur" stage of an Atlas V missile launch. We express our gratitude to Mr. Ted Molczan for the "heads up" on this incident. We copy below his e-mail of March 13, 2015, about the incident. PD


Posted 2015-03-13

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