Orange star?

Marin B

Active Member
Tonight at 7:15 I saw an orange light in the southeast sky at about a 45 degree angle. I live 15 miles north of San Francisco. The light appeared to be moving very slowly in a W/SW direction. I was at the bottom of my street and pulled over and got out of my car to look at it. I've lived here about 20 years and have never seen anything like it before. I drove the rest of the way home, just a couple more minutes and looked in the same general direction and saw an orange star in the sky, which may have been Betelgeuse according to the starmap on my phone. But what I saw at the bottom of my street appeared so much brighter and larger and seemed to be moving. So maybe what I thought was a moving orange object in the sky was an illusion from the haze and the moon (and perhaps my aging nightime vision)? I found no media reports of orange UFOs over San Francisco.:rolleyes: I guess if it actually was Betelgeuse it will be there again tomorrow night at the same time, so unless I get a more convincing answer from someone here before then, I might be back there tomorrow night for a 2nd look. I'm attaching a photo of what I saw - though it just looks like an orange dot against a black skyorangeobject.JPG moon and contrail.JPG . Bonus photo was taken about an hour later -contrail from a UPS flight 5X59.
 
Was the first photo taken of what you presumed to be a star?
Are you saying when you stopped to look at, you noticed it was moving? There does seem to be some light clouds which can give the impression of the object moving when the clouds are actually moving.
I do hope you try the recreation and update your finding. I'm researching earthquake lights for a presentation at a scientific colloquium and these types of orange floating balls have been historically documented to appear days before some events (whereas the flashing and glowing types of EQLs happen co-seismically.) But in this case, it would be good info to know if you mistook a bright star rising for a floating light.
 
Could it be the landing lights of a plane bound to SFO? I often see similar orange lights from planes 10-15 miles away descending in my direction before turning to the nearby airports (STN or LTN).
 
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Could it be the landing lights of a plane bound to SFO? I often see similar orange lights from planes 10-15 miles away descending in my direction before turning to the nearby airports (STN or LTN).

I second that suggestion. SFO departing planes frequently fly directly over me, and appear for several minutes as a barely moving bright light hovering in the sky.

Here's a brightness boosted version. Possibly three other stars there.
Metabunk 2018-02-01 07-09-10.jpg
 
Could it be the landing lights of a plane bound to SFO? I often see similar orange lights from planes 10-15 miles away descending in my direction before turning to the nearby airports (STN or LTN).

I looked at FR24 and didn't see anything. Actually, it was unusually light air traffic and I didn't hear any airplanes.FR24.png
 
Was the first photo taken of what you presumed to be a star?
Are you saying when you stopped to look at, you noticed it was moving? There does seem to be some light clouds which can give the impression of the object moving when the clouds are actually moving..

Yes, I stopped, got out of the car and looked at the light. At the time I was convinced it was moving very slowly. But being the skeptic I am, I talked myself out of it.
 
The three stars match Betelgeuse, Rigel and Sirius in both position and relative brightness. Which would mean the orange light is not a star.
Metabunk 2018-02-01 07-24-25.jpg
 
Tip: To match photos in Stellarium, use the "Perspective" projection under "Markings", not Stereographic.
Metabunk 2018-02-01 08-23-55.jpg
 
The three stars match Betelgeuse, Rigel and Sirius in both position and relative brightness. Which would mean the orange light is not a star.

Thanks. Guess there's no need to go to the bottom of my street tonight. I wish I had taken a voice note of my observations at the time, but I was torn between watching it longer and getting Indian take-out home to my family. I checked my Nextdoor.com site and no mention of it. A few more Google searches and I learned that there was a satellite launched recently called the "humanity star". Perhaps that's what I saw, but if so, it didn't seem to be moving the normal speed of a satellite and was going in the opposite direction.

If you look up at the night sky, you might just see a new star glittering from space. Private satellite company Rocket Lab secretly carried a three-foot-wide carbon fibre ball into orbit on the back of its Electron rocket last week.
Content from External Source
http://www.newsweek.com/humanity-star-rocket-lab-disco-ball-790505
 
Here's a Humanity Star tracker.
https://www.thehumanitystar.com/#tracker

It does orbit in a north to south direction, so maybe that's what I saw and it appeared to be moving very slowly because it was moving mostly away from me. If anyone better at this kind of stuff than me can figure out if it passed over San Francisco last night, I would appreciate it!
 
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