(DougD) wrote in :

Was just out watching the space station go over, and over in the ssw was
Jupiter. Not much new there, but as I was looking around with the cheapo
binocs, about 10 deg. below Jupiter was something akin to what some
folks would describe as a "disco ball".. It was multi-colored, mostly
red's, whites, and a bit of green. At first I thought it was just
navigation lights, but after watching it for about 10 minutes and it
didn't move like an airplane or satellite, I was a bit dumbfounded. Just
took a look in Starry Night, and it would appear to be "Antares". Does
this description sound familiar to anyone, or was I looking at something
much different? It was very visible just to the eye, and fairly
spectacular through goggles, can't say I've ever seen a star so
multi-colored or shimmering as that! This was at about 9:50pm off the
coast of Van. Island.

d.


Low altitude star twinkling. When so low to the horizon, the atmosphere
acts like a prism, splitting the stars colors. The usual twinkling
caused by atmospheric turbulence combines with this prism effect to
make the star change colors quite rapidly.

You are the second person I've run across to have observed the
same star doing the same thing and thinking it was a satellite.

Brian
--
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