Unidentified light in SSW sky about 35 degrees up.

[Rebel Rob]

Hi,  Can someone tell me what I just saw.  I went outside and say this light in the SSW sky about 35 degrees up that seems to be perfectly fixed like a planet.  It now looks alot like Venus, but before it was pulsating oddly, changing shapes, and occasionally glowing redish earlier. It doesn't appear to be quite circular either.    A friend couldn't see it in Boston.

Can any of you go take a look?

Thanks

[Rebel Rob]

It looks like it might be jupiter, but it sure was acting strange earlier. 

[Puke]

Are you high?

[Lloyd Danforth]

Change Dealers.

[Rebel Rob]

Ha ha ha   

Real funny guys.  You can ask Rik, he saw some of the weird stuff it was doing.  But then again, maybe we've all just gone nutty out here at the freeddomes. 

[Lloyd Danforth]

They, probably, have done a program on the 'all night long, west of the Rockies' radio show about the attraction of UFO to Bucky Bumps.

[AntonLee]

that was just me, sorry.

[WithoutAPaddle]

Might it have anything to do with this?

NASA rocket's strange lights raised a few eyebrows

By Robert M. Cook
bcook@fosters.com
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
ELIOT, Maine — Fritz Dauth and his fishing companion wanted to catch some stripers in the Piscataqua River Saturday before it got dark, but caught sight of some very strange lights in the sky instead.

Tammy Dauth, his wife, said the couple lives in Cape Neddick, Maine, and that her husband told her he saw an object that looked like a dark cloud with lights behind it. She said after a few minutes, Fritz Dauth said it resembled a dark cloud with triangular lights around it.

In her e-mail to the newspaper, Tammy Dauth said the strange light her husband and his fishing companion saw appeared to be "a comet like object with a tail at first, then the "tail" fanned out to a triangular shape. Then it looked like it just vaporized and there was nothing left but a glowing cloud, that lasted for awhile before it dissipated, leaving nothing but stars in the sky?"

"He didn't know what it was. He had no idea. But it was enough to make him come home and say 'You won't believe what I saw,' " Tammy Dauth said.

What her husband and his friend along with many other people from Virginia to New Hampshire saw Saturday night was a NASA rocket that was interacting with clouds overhead as part of a scientific experiment.

Fritz Dauth was not the only person who caught a glimpse of the strange lights in the sky.

South Berwick Police Chief Dana Lajoie said his department received one phone call on Saturday around 8:30 p.m.

The caller reportedly told the police dispatcher they saw a strange light in the sky and it appeared smoky," Lajoie said.

"The light and the sky around the beam was smoky," said Lajoie about the caller's description of what they saw.

Dover Fire Chief Perry Plummer said the city's police/fire dispatch center received some calls from city residents who inquired about the strange lights in the sky and wondered if anything was going on.

"I wouldn't say it caused any alarm in the City of Dover," Plummer said.

According to an article published in SPACE.com magazine Tuesday, the rocket was part of a NASA project called the Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE). Scientists wanted to trigger cloud formation around the rocket's exhaust particles. The clouds are intended to simulate naturally-occurring phenomena called noctilucent clouds, which are the highest clouds in the atmosphere.

"This is really essentially at the boundary of space," said Wayne Scales, a scientist at Virginia Tech, in the article. He said he will use computer models to study the physics of the artificial dust cloud as it's released. "Nothing like this has been done before and that's why everybody's really excited about it."

"What the CARE experiment hopes to do is to create an artificial dust layer," Scales told SPACE.com. "Hopefully it's a creation in a controlled sense, which will allow scientists to study different aspects of it, the turbulence generated on the inside, the distribution of dust particles and such."

CARE is a project of the Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense Space Test Program. The spacecraft was launched aboard a NASA four-stage Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket.

When told Monday that the strange lights were in fact caused by the NASA rocket, Tammy Dauth said her husband "would be very relieved."

She also said that it might have been good if NASA let the public know what was going on before the rocket was launched so no one would be alarmed.

"With everything that is going on in the world today, you think they would have given us a little clue," she said.

While some Seacoast and New Hampshire residents said they saw the strange light created by the NASA spacecraft, area fire departments and the Strafford County Dispatch Center in Dover said  they did not hear anything about it.

"We didn't take any calls on it," said Cait Comeau, assistant supervisor of the dispatch center located at the Strafford County Complex.

She said she checked with a dispatcher who worked Saturday evening until 10 p.m. and was told they did not hear anything about the strange lights from any county fire departments, residents or police departments.

Durham Assistant Fire Chief Jason Cleary said he was also unaware if his department received any calls from town residents who may have seen the strange lights in the sky Saturday night.

"I'm not aware of any," he said. "No information was passed to me."

For those who did see the strange lights in the sky, it was a spectacle they might never forget.

"I saw this bright light with a cone shaped greenish colored haze coming down from it. The light did not move. It just went out, and the 'haze' lingered until it faded out," said Erica Remington in an e-mail.

She wrote there was no sound and it was not an airplane or a helicopter.

"It was nothing I have ever seen in my life. It was large in comparison to a star, and didn't move as a meteor would. It did resemble a comet, but was there and gone before you knew. I hope you can get to the bottom of this 'light in the sky,'" Remington wrote.

Ed Cote said he and some friends noticed the strange lights as they sat around a campfire at a neighbor's house in Salem.

"It looked as though it was hovering just south of us. The light was a cone shape, the widest point pointing downward toward the ground. We all stood and watched for a moment then it started to fade into what looked like cloud. But there was no clouds," Cote wrote in a e-mail.

Don Slowik of Wilton, a math teacher at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, said he also saw it and took a photo of the cloud as it dimmed. He thought it was a meteor that had exploded in space and was spewing debris into the atmosphere.

"It kind of looked like a jet coming through a cloud," said Slowik, who also holds a doctoral degree in astronomy.

He wishes NASA would post some photos and video of the rocket on its website.

"It was quite impressive," Slowik said.

[Friday]

Might it have anything to do with this?

NASA rocket's strange lights raised a few eyebrows

Why in the world do people call the cops when they see a UFO?  The cops couldn't find my stolen car, or catch the guy who raped my neighbor on the back steps[note: these are Kalifornia incidents, not NH], but they're going to protect us from ALIENS?!   

[Lloyd Danforth]

For a couple of  years I Surf Casted for Striper and Blues off of Weekapaug in RI.  We fished with the tide where a tidal pond emptied and filled.
One morning about 2am a light went off in the sky for a second. The entire Bay lit up. We could see housed 5 miles away around the bay and the cliffs of Block Island 15 miles away. It was not a flare.  It didn't make any noise.

[AntonLee]

we actually did see a light in the sky on Saturday.  I told my girlfriend it was just a helicopter doing speed trap stuff.  She was more correct than I.

[dalebert]

Why in the world do people call the cops when they see a UFO?

I swear people see a halo formed around someone when you stick a badge on them. I was just watching Flash Forward, the series premiere. Right after the entire world blanks out for 2 minutes and everyone is climbing out of their crashed cars, dazed and confused, they see these guys and go-

"Are you guys cops? What do we do? When is help going to arrive?! We're pathetic lab rats and completely incompetent. Fix everything!"

I'm paraphrasing.

[Friday]

Why in the world do people call the cops when they see a UFO?

I swear people see a halo formed around someone when you stick a badge on them. I was just watching Flash Forward, the series premiere. Right after the entire world blanks out for 2 minutes and everyone is climbing out of their crashed cars, dazed and confused, they see these guys and go-

"Are you guys cops? What do we do? When is help going to arrive?! We're pathetic lab rats and completely incompetent. Fix everything!"

I'm paraphrasing.

Was that show good?  It looked intriguing.

[Raineyrocks]

Might it have anything to do with this?

NASA rocket's strange lights raised a few eyebrows

Why in the world do people call the cops when they see a UFO?  The cops couldn't find my stolen car, or catch the guy who raped my neighbor on the back steps[note: these are Kalifornia incidents, not NH], but they're going to protect us from ALIENS?!   

Good point, Friday!     I personally would either call Rick or Mommy!

[Pat McCotter]

Why in the world do people call the cops when they see a UFO?

I swear people see a halo formed around someone when you stick a badge on them. I was just watching Flash Forward, the series premiere. Right after the entire world blanks out for 2 minutes and everyone is climbing out of their crashed cars, dazed and confused, they see these guys and go-

"Are you guys cops? What do we do? When is help going to arrive?! We're pathetic lab rats and completely incompetent. Fix everything!"

I'm paraphrasing.

Was that show good?  It looked intriguing.

I just watched this on Hulu. It looks intriguing so I will give it a couple more episodes.