On 9 Jul 2001 vansluytman@space.com wrote: > Hello All, > > I'm an Airline pilot, and I received a question from another pilot > friend recently. He relayed a description of an object seen in the [...] > He told UAL and they thought he was kidding until they also saw it. Saw > it for 45 minutes or so. ATC new nothing about it. He said it was > basically in the same position although did move from side to side from > his relative position. Said it was shiny like what an American "paint > job" looks like. Too far up to make out a shape other than round. My guess is Venus. Venus is approximately overhead around midday at US latitudes, and is around mag -4 -- readily visible during daytime IF one knows where to look. The difficulty is usually to focus one's eyes correctly on infinity when looking into a blue sky. In the situation described, the observers would have been aided (guided) in focusing by watching the overhead aircraft. Less atmosphere above should help contrast-wise, too :-) Magnus ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 01:22:22 PDT