Horace -
The object was low in the SSW about an hour after sunset. Still working on finding out the viewing angle and umbra position, but the max sight angle was around 22 degrees. Came up vertically from the horizon out of the SSW, turned towards the west and moved parallel to the horizon for a while, then back "down" towards the SW as it darkened and winked out. I'm assuming there that the loss of light was due to a change of attitude of the object's reflective surface since it appeared at the end to have been moving towards more sunlight. I looked up ISS orbits and watched it make a good overhead pass the other night at about 20 minutes later than the UFO sighting for a comparable view. Apparent speed through the sky was around the same or a bit faster, and the pale yellow color changed to the orange, then reddish orange color as the ISS approached the umbra and went out, at the end it was similar in color to the UFO. The UFO was much brighter though, and had the reddish orange color through most of its flight, as opposed to the ISS showing that color only for the last couple of seconds of its path. The UFO seemed a little more yellow right at first as it was rising up in the sky and was at its brightest. "Up" would be coming from the SSW, away from the sunset and towards shadow. The sunset that day was more colorful too, so it may have contributed to the orange color over a wider altitude range. I would say that after a fresh look at the ISS, the UFO was probably a rather large object. It was substantially brighter than I've ever seen the ISS, and the ISS, now completed and in full sail, is pretty spectacular. R. From: Horace Heffner [mailto:hheff...@mtaonline.net] Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010 10:32 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Personal:Little help with UFO sighting? I wrote: " If the object was ever in a direction approximately due north or south of you, i.e. on a line perpendicular to the sunset location, then the altitude h I provided fairly closely applies to the object for that time t in the table. If it was mainly east or west then another calculation is needed. I would say anything above 100,000 feet, or 18.9 miles, was probably not a military jet, and certainly not a passenger jet. That altitude h corresponds to about 22 minutes after surface darkness - to whatever degree such darkness needs to be defined. From experience there, I know it gets dark pretty fast in Hawaii after sunset - especially compared to here - where sunsets can take a very long time. 8^) If you observed the object an hour after sunset then I'd say it was well past the 22 minutes after darkness mark. A general compass direction thus may be sufficient information for a definitive answer. That far after sunset, an hour, taken even alone, is a pretty strong indication it was not an airplane. " I overlooked the fact that if the object were to the east of you then the umbra plane would be even higher. It is only when the object was to the west of you that there can be any doubt at all. Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
