LONG DESCRIPTION OF SIGHTING REPORT

Long Description of Sighting Report
My wife and I had just got back home from going to Sonic to get some food. We took the dogs out in the back yard, and were looking at the clear skies, the stars were really bright. We stayed out for a couple of minutes, and noticed all sorts of planes, low and high altitudes, doing their normal airplane-stuff, like going places, or practicing for something. Nothing unusual at all, until my wife asks, "Did you see that strobe next to Orion?" At this time, 6:40, Orion was in the southeast skies, about 80º or less. It strobed again, and I did see it, it was near Orion's bow, almost directly south of us, again around 70-80º up. It seemed blue, like a xenon strobe, so I conjectured that it was probably a high alt. airplane, going west at assumably 30-50,000 ft. My wife tells me "It was just going the other direction though..." As I've now seen it strobe about 4-5 times, I am noticing the path is strangely unpredictable. I tell her I am noticing its wandering as well, it has no predictable motion, and just flashes 9-10 seconds apart, like clockwork, but shows up in random nearby locations. I ran inside, grabbed the handycam and tripod, and caught the flash! By the time I'd actually gotten the camera set-up, it had moved back southeast towards Orion's head (I don't know if that funny-shaped triad of stars above his shoulders is supposed to be his head, but that's where it was at this time). I thought for sure i wouldn't be able to get it, but I did! It's not too exciting, it's a 9-10 second strobe wandering around, it looks yellow on film, I had to use night shot to increase exposure, and it discolored it from how it visually appeared(blue). Since I have 20 minutes of really good video, with lots of reference stars, and a sporadically stationary camera, I'll stop describing the event and let the video do the talking. Here's what I think...It was not a satellite, they either move, or they don't, and this was jumping all over...I couldn't keep a close focus w/o it jumping off frame repeatedly. It was not an airplane, they can "orbit" at many altitudes, I see a C-130 doing it almost every night over our airport around 5-10,000 ft, sometimes reconnaisance or surveys are done this way...but this wasn't "orbiting." It had no circular or straight line path, just complete randomness. Not to mention, I've 'caught' airplanes flying cross-country w/our handycam, you can always see nav lights w/the strobe, even way up there. I thought maybe it could be an elaborate prank, a signal strobe hung from a balloon could maybe do that, but I'd think w/ our recent weather pattern (frontal passage), a balloon wouldn't stick around for 30 minutes w/out blowing away, or blowing up from depressurization. It wasn't a meteor, or an asteroid, I've seen hundreds, and none of them have ever taken anything but a deliberate staight-line path, and quickly. Perhaps the gov't has some top-secret super-manuever craft that jumps from place to place aimlessly w/ no sound at high altitudes, but besides that being silly in function, it's not so secret w/ a bright blue strobe on it. After filming it for an exhausting 20 minutes, we decided we'd go eat our now cold fast food. My hands were getting tired chasing it back and forth across the sky anyhow. When we finished our food, I went back out and it was completely cloudy. I made a DVD of the handycam video, I'll send it in (that would take way too long to upload it).

Long Description of Sighting Report

My wife and I had just got back home from going to Sonic to get some food. We took the dogs out in the back yard, and were looking at the clear skies, the stars were really bright. We stayed out for a couple of minutes, and noticed all sorts of planes, low and high altitudes, doing their normal airplane-stuff, like going places, or practicing for something. Nothing unusual at all, until my wife asks, "Did you see that strobe next to Orion?" At this time, 6:40, Orion was in the southeast skies, about 80º or less. It strobed again, and I did see it, it was near Orion's bow, almost directly south of us, again around 70-80º up. It seemed blue, like a xenon strobe, so I conjectured that it was probably a high alt. airplane, going west at assumably 30-50,000 ft. My wife tells me "It was just going the other direction though..." As I've now seen it strobe about 4-5 times, I am noticing the path is strangely unpredictable. I tell her I am noticing its wandering as well, it has no predictable motion, and just flashes 9-10 seconds apart, like clockwork, but shows up in random nearby locations. I ran inside, grabbed the handycam and tripod, and caught the flash! By the time I'd actually gotten the camera set-up, it had moved back southeast towards Orion's head (I don't know if that funny-shaped triad of stars above his shoulders is supposed to be his head, but that's where it was at this time). I thought for sure i wouldn't be able to get it, but I did! It's not too exciting, it's a 9-10 second strobe wandering around, it looks yellow on film, I had to use night shot to increase exposure, and it discolored it from how it visually appeared(blue). Since I have 20 minutes of really good video, with lots of reference stars, and a sporadically stationary camera, I'll stop describing the event and let the video do the talking. Here's what I think...It was not a satellite, they either move, or they don't, and this was jumping all over...I couldn't keep a close focus w/o it jumping off frame repeatedly. It was not an airplane, they can "orbit" at many altitudes, I see a C-130 doing it almost every night over our airport around 5-10,000 ft, sometimes reconnaisance or surveys are done this way...but this wasn't "orbiting." It had no circular or straight line path, just complete randomness. Not to mention, I've 'caught' airplanes flying cross-country w/our handycam, you can always see nav lights w/the strobe, even way up there. I thought maybe it could be an elaborate prank, a signal strobe hung from a balloon could maybe do that, but I'd think w/ our recent weather pattern (frontal passage), a balloon wouldn't stick around for 30 minutes w/out blowing away, or blowing up from depressurization. It wasn't a meteor, or an asteroid, I've seen hundreds, and none of them have ever taken anything but a deliberate staight-line path, and quickly. Perhaps the gov't has some top-secret super-manuever craft that jumps from place to place aimlessly w/ no sound at high altitudes, but besides that being silly in function, it's not so secret w/ a bright blue strobe on it. After filming it for an exhausting 20 minutes, we decided we'd go eat our now cold fast food. My hands were getting tired chasing it back and forth across the sky anyhow. When we finished our food, I went back out and it was completely cloudy. I made a DVD of the handycam video, I'll send it in (that would take way too long to upload it).