Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I was looking at the Astronomy picture of the day for today, and the ensuing discussion of what the streaks could be.
This reminded me of a period of about 20 seconds in the summer of 2004, when I saw what could only be satellites, but satellites as I've never seen them before: grouped into a diamond pattern, like planes flying in formation.
They moved very smoothly across the sky, approximately from south to north. I forget the exact count, but it was between 4 and 7. I could see them through binoculars, but they were essentially invisible to the naked eye. There was no vapor trail, and they were moving much faster than a commercial jet at that distance, so I'm sure they were in orbit.
The weird thing was, why the group? Who would set up a group of satellites to move in a delta pattern? The only probable answer is that they were spy satellites, or something like that, perhaps using their separation for parallax measurement. Iridium and other low earth orbit satellites travel singly in their orbits.
It was a very odd experience, and I avoided freaking out about it, since the only reasonable explanation was probably a government secret, and that left only unreasonable explanations as alternatives (aliens! super-high-speed jets!). Still, I wonder what they were.
Posted at 10:46 permanent link category: /astronomy
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater