Has anyone ever seen a point of light in the night sky, travel from star to the next, in seconds?

Question

I was 13 yrs. old and playing outside one evening (8:30) and a playmate pointed out a moving light in the sky. I and about 6 other kids looked and saw a point of light moving in the night sky. It would stop at a star, would stop for a few seconds and move on to the next star. The time of observed travel from one star to another took about 10-15 seconds (+ -). This point of light kept stopping at a star and then moving on to another star until it finally disappeared over the horizon. I now know that travelling from one star to another in a matter of seconds would require unheard of speeds. I cannot to this day even begin to explain such a feat but what we all saw that night is hard to understand. Has anyone else ever experienced such an event?

addendum: this event occurred in 1963.

Answer 1

You saw a satellite, probably one of the Echo satellites but maybe another.

Stars are points of light with no dimension, due to their distance. When their light enters the atmosphere, however, the light gets dispersed to sizes that are typically in the neighborhood of 1/2 to 1 arc second. So appear to us as tiny blobs.

A satellite appears to "stop" when it crosses a star because it is hidden from view by the blobby disk of the star light. When it finishes crossing you see it again and it "looks like" it is starting up.

These days you can't spend a night under the sky without seeing many satellites, and there are so many satellites and space junk that even when using a telescope (which looks at very small portions of the sky) one sees satellites crossing the field of view many times over the course of a night.

Answer 2

Yes, I used to look out in the night sky plenty of times for moving lights and have seen many strange things, 1 in fact was about 4 years ago at around 9:30pm when I saw a star like object moving directly to other stars and appeared to stop there then suddenly dodge it by going around it then continued about 5 times then very quickly moved over a large distance in a Z like position and dissapeared

Answer 3

I am definitely sure you saw a UFO. I have not seen one yet but some people see it but they are not interested to go into deep research on what they saw

An unidentified flying object, or UFO, is any real or apparent flying object which cannot be identified by the observer and which remains unidentified after investigation. In popular culture, UFO is often used to refer to any hypothetical alien spacecraft. The term flying saucer is also sometimes used.

Reports of unusual aerial phenomena date back to ancient times, but reports of UFO sightings started becoming more common after the first widely publicized U.S. sighting in 1947. Many tens of thousands of UFO reports have since been made worldwide. Many more sightings may, however, remain unreported due to fear of public ridicule because of the social stigma surrounding the the subject of UFOs, and because most nations lack any officially sanctioned authority to receive and evaluate UFO reports.

Once a UFO is identified as a known object (for example an aircraft or weather balloon), it ceases to be classified as a UFO and is reclassified as an identified object.

For further info about this topic goto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufo

Answer 4

Since you are probably much older than 13 now, don't trust your memory. The Science channel did a segment on this with UFO observers and showed how flawed their memory was after a day let alone years. Talk to a trial lawyer. The worst evidence you can bring into court is an eye witness.

Answer 5

You definitely saw a satellite. You can see satellites on almost any clear night, especially in the first two hours after sunset.

Answer 6

A flash of a meteorite exploding and passing in front of another star

Answer 7

Not me.