Day 22: What the Heck Are We Seeing??

Earlier in the month hubby and I drove down to Germantown to do some shopping. The sun was setting as we were driving home. We love to take the rural roads, and they are the most direct way to travel from Hartford to Germantown.

Just after the sun dipped below the horizon I noticed a bright star with a tail near the clouds.

"I didn't know we had a comet in the sky, but it's tail should be more opposite the sun," I thought.

Then I watched in amazement as it DRIFTED SLOWLY to the west. It looked like a meteor but it didn't move like one. As I fumbled for my camera it began to fade. "It's moving behind a cloud" I thought. "No, it actually faded away!" Just then I noticed another bright dot appear in the same place as the first! It grew a tail and drifted. By now my camera was ready and I was desperately trying to take pictures in spite of the motion of the car.

I told my hubby to pull over. "See that bright thing in the sky with the tail?" "There...There!" I pointed. He finally saw it, while driving the curves of the road. "PULL OVER SO I CAN TAKE PICTURES!!!"

"I can't! Cars behind!"

"Pull over there!" I pleaded, or demanded, or both.

He found a spot near the corner. I hopped out and grabbed as many pictures as I could. I saw at least four of them, all originating from the SAME AREA of the sky. My hubby speculated they might be UFO's. I told him, "Well, they are unidentified flying objects, but they move WAY TOO SLOW to be meteors."

I've been a sky-watcher all my life, I've seen lots of meteors streak across the sky. I saw a fireball when I was a teen in L.A. I discovered a comet when I was five and we lived in the California desert. I told my parents it was a comet. My sighting was confirmed when the morning paper announced a comet named by two Japanese astronomers. I've watched the International Space Station cross the sky. I've watched high-flying jets leave trails. I know what things look like.

I shared my photos with as many pages I thought might have an answer to what they were. Never got an answer. That happened November 8th.

The today I watched a video of the SAME THING filmed by a teen in Japan!

Amazing, I thought. At last, someone can show how crazy SLOW these "meteors" are. The article "connects" the slow moving meteor to the earthquake, which is pure speculation and coincidence, since we saw the same objects on the 8th. here in southeast Wisconsin.

Here is the video:

And here are my pictures from November 8

Uncropped

Closely cropped with an enlarged view inside the circle

Brightness lowered to show it better

Another one, drifting off to the west

Have you seen any of these? Do you know what they are?