Ok, so I was out on my back porch this evening in Dallas, TX (Sunday September 4, 2011) at aprox. 19:55 Central Daylight Time. The sun had just set (sunset was 19:51 local) so there was still a good amount of light out, enough to see a nice glow in the Western horizon.

Anyway, I looked up (almost straight up) and noticed a bright star-like light in the sky. It was bright enough to seem very bright even though there was still light in the sky. I noticed it wasn't twinkling so my first thought was it might be Venus or some other planet.

I have an application on my Android phone called Google Sky Map. You can hold it up and it shows you a map of the sky and what you should be looking at. So I brought that up and when I pointed it at the light, there was no planet anywhere near that location, nor was there a bright star. To be sure it was calibrated, I pointed it at the moon, and sure enough, the moon was right where it should be on the application.

I was out there with my dad and I asked him to look at it just to make sure I wasn't seeing things lol. He saw it too.

About a minute or so later, I looked back up and it was gone! The light had totally disappeared. Again, my dad confirmed it was gone as well. When we both looked at it, it did not appear to be moving which is why a satellite was never one of our initial thoughts. However, after it disappeared, I began to wonder.

I tried to figure out what that could possibly have been. It wasn't twinkling, which suggested it wasn't another star or other galactic phenomenon. However, since it couldn't have been a planet, the only other explanation I could come up with was a satellite. I know it wasn't the ISS. I've seen that many times and it only stays in the sky for about a minute as it tracks across the sky, and its movement is obvious. This however, appeared to be still for the whole time I viewed it (aprox. 2 mins).

Could this have been a geosynchronous satellite? I know geostationary satellites are only over the equator, but geosynchronous satellites, not necessarily. This is the only explanation I could come up with. So I looked into them and I found this:

"If a geosynchronous satellite's orbit is not exactly aligned with the equator, the orbit is known as an inclined orbit. It will appear (when viewed by someone on the ground) to oscillate daily around a fixed point."

So, that would suggest (to me, anyway) that it is possible that for the short length of time that it was visible to me, it could have appeared to be stationary. As for it being visible and then disappearing? My only explanation I could come up with was the sun had dropped below the horizon, which means the light was aiming up at it briefly and lit it up, reflecting it brightly. However, after a few minutes, the sun continued to set and stopped illuminating it.

What do you guys think? Any other explanations? Does my theory sound plausible?