1

Today, at about 23:40 in Sungkyungwan University, South Korea, a friend and I spotted a bright light.

It was brighter than nearby stars. Since I was looking at South, and at that time, the brightest star in the Southern sky was Saturn, with an apparent magnitude of about 0.9, I'm safely assuming that its apparent magnitude was brighter than 0.9. The thing was even brighter than that (I think that it was as bright as a full moon).

Its initial altitude was about 60degrees then it fell below the horizon very quickly (in about 3~4 seconds). At first, I thought that it was a comet of some kind, but It wasn`t leaving any traces in the sky, and also it was moving in sort of a random way, going from left to right to left to right and so on.

It was a point, but it was so bright that it appeared larger than Vega(I'm not talking about absolute sizes, as stars don't have sizes. I'm just saying that, just as brighter stars seem larger, this moving thing was brighter and therefore, seemed larger.)

My friend and I saw it together, and wondered what it was.

Then, after about 10 minutes, it appeared again. But this time, it came from the place where it disappeared at its first sight. It moved up to about 10degrees (altitude). When it was going up, it was going up in a parabolic path. Then, it came down but along the way, its path changed from parabola to zig zag. Going from up to down took about 2 seconds.

What could this be? This cannot have been an optical illusion because both my friend and I witnessed it. Also, it could not have been a satellite as it was too bright(almost as bright as the moon) and moved in a non-linear path (also it moved very very fast).

What could this be?

James K
  • 120,702
  • 5
  • 298
  • 423
Danny Han
  • 111
  • 2
  • Most likely there was someone flying a small drone not very far from you – antlersoft May 17 '17 at 15:20
  • 1
    A minor point "This cannot have been an optical illusion because both my friend and I witnessed it". This is wrong as you're both probably standing close enough together so that you could see the same optical illusion in the distance. – StephenG - Help Ukraine May 17 '17 at 22:06

0 Answers0