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New supernova sighting 4:54 PM (PDT) 12-11-2005 in the NW sky???
I believe my wife and I may have sighted a supernova at 4:52 to 4:54 pm
(PDT). We were watching the sunset in Carlsbad State Beach, Carlsbad, CA when I saw a VERY bright star in the NW sky. I knew it couldn't be a star because the sky was still too bright to see venus. I knew where venus would appear - we've been watching venus and the sunset for a few days now. Well, this got me very curious so I started watching this "star". I expected it would move and turn out to be just a plane. But after one minute it hadn't moved at all. By this time my wife also saw it and said "hey, there's Venus". I told her it couldn't be Venus so we watched it together. It got much brighter for about 30 seconds and then suddenly got dimmer and dimmer and then became too dim to see in the still bright sky. I kept looking at the spot where this "star" had been for another minute to see if maybe it was a plane after all, but no - there was no trace of a plane there. If it HAD been a plane there's no way it would suddenly dim like that and vanish. I excitedly called my son who's a student at CU. He told me it might have been a satellite. But we watched it for two minutes, from 4:52 pm to 4:54 pm. If it had been a satellite with a typical 90 min orbit, it would have moved about 8 degrees - which should have been noticeable. But this object had not moved visibly. A few minutes later, venus became visible in the SW evening sky. I estimate this "supernova" was about 90 degrees north of venus, in the NW sky. I googled for "new supernova" but apparently no one else observed it. Was this a supernova or something else?? Perplexed |
#3
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New supernova sighting 4:54 PM (PDT) 12-11-2005 in the NW sky???
Airplane
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