I'd like to see if anyone can answer this question for me.
I have taken a few astrophysics courses at university so I know a little bit about what goes on up there. (Evidently not enough).

Anyways, I have seen a strange light in the sky 3 times in the past month. Twice it was in the same place different nights, third night (tonight) it was different but the exact same occurrence.
First two times I was looking out my bedroom window (my computer is right by the window) and was looking at the sky. A point of light appeared about the magnitude of a star, and after staring at it for a few seconds, I could tell it was getting brighter, to the magnitude of a planet. Then after a few more seconds it was as brighter than I've ever seen Venus or Mars in opposition (really bright). After it hit this point, it would slowly dim down over 10 seconds or so and be gone. The point of light never moved in any direction.
Once or twice in different places I could chalk this up to a meteorite. But now that I have seen the exact same occurrence 3 times, and twice in the same place (oddly enough they have all been the same declination about 40 degrees above the horizon), it makes me wonder what else it could be.

All of these times I have gone to NASA's Satellite and Space Station live tracking website to see if anything was overhead, and all times there was nothing listed at all, in about a 2000km radius. I live in Calgary AB Canada BTW.

Does anyone else have any other ideas of what this could be? I have seen meteor showers before, and have also watched a large object burn up in the atmosphere while out in the bush (no light pollution). It was most beautiful and it was clearly moving. All the sightings with this current case have been stationary, and increasing then decreasing in luminosity, as if a large reflective object is directing the suns rays like a lighthouse.

Let me know what you think.
Thanks all.

-Alistair

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Sounds like Iridium flares. Depending on the track of the orbit in relation to your location, they can sometimes appear to be almost not moving.

Although you list your location as Calgary, the only date you specified was September 5th.

Per the Heavens Above website, here are the Iridium flares that were visible from your location the last two days:



For the other two sightings, since you didn't specify the dates, there's not enough information to determine if Iridium flares were visible then.

Try this site

http://www.heavens-above.com/

Register with your location information and then check on Iridium flares for the other two days when you saw this phenomenon. If there's a match, then there's your answer.

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Maksutov, for concern of your workload, I think you can put a plain link to heavens above, they have all parameters (location, time, etc) in the URI.

EDIT: Some URI manipulated links for our friend (HA doesn't seem to allow more than a 6 day span):
Aug 1-6
Aug 7-12
Aug 13-18
Aug 19-24
Aug 25-30
Aug 31-Sep 4

Thanks.

Please reread my post.

I already did (http://www.heavens-above.com/).

Thank you for your concern.

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What I meant was that it would be easier for you to post a plain link, than to take a screen shot and upload somewhere. I saw your link, however, by "I think you can put a plain link to heavens above", I didn't mean the entry page, but the page you had a dump of. Sorry for the confusion.

The reason for the screen shot was that it covered, for Calgary, the time period that InfernoBreeze had identified for one of his sightings.

Then, since InfernoBreeze had not specified the dates of the other sightings, I posted the URL for Heavens Above. Since I was hoping InfernoBreeze remembered the days of the other sightings, then, if so, he could enter that data into the Heavens Above fields and determine if he had in fact been seeing Iridium flares.

Before you can do anything really specific at Heavens Above, you have to access the entry page and enter your location as part of the registration process. Then you can access the pages that give information for your location on satellite passes, including Iridium flares.

The screen shot was for downtown Calgary. The hope was that it was "in the ballpark" for InfernoBreeze. The actual location for InfernoBreeze (at the air base) may be significantly different, to the point of affecting his sightings of Iridium flares. That's why I posted the URL (i.e., "plain link") to the Heavens Above entry page.

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My point was that the content of the page is not "state dependent"; all required parameters are in the URI. They look the same regardless of who, how or when you get there.

I didn't mean to stirr a fuzz, just that in this specific case, a link to the page you were viewing when taking the shot, could have replaced the image.

There are a lot of geostationary Mirrors in Space.

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One geostationary satellite called Superbird A can (or could) flash as bright as magnitude +2 according to this link
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/hattonj...sohp/TECH.HTML

but in general I think they are quite a bit dimmer.

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Magnitude 2 is only as bright as Polaris.

Not as bright as your common planet

This sounds like Iridium flares. The only part that doesn't fit is the objects being stationary although Maksutov touched on the reason that might've been the case.

But that's the brightest star in the sky!
(or so they say)

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An iridun flare would move across the sky, they start dim then if you are in a favoured observing position can fairly quickly brighten to mag -9 before dimming down again as it continues on its track, eventually fading out as they go into Earth's shadow.

What you describe sounds more like an aricraft front main landing light. From a distance if they are flying more or less directly towards you you will see the light aparently stationary and brightening and dimming as the lightbeam passes by. The fact you have seen more than one in the same position of the sky supports this because aircraft have fairly ridgid flightpaths dictated by air traffic control.

I see this effect regularly as I'm about 25 miles from an airport (Edinburgh EDN)

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Surely you can't be Sirius.

I was also going to suggest airplanes. They tend to follow the same tracks approaching the airport (the FAA is funny that way), and the main nose gear light from the front when a plane is on approach can be very bright indeed. I've witnessed this numerous times.

Hey Keith! you get pulled back in by vBulletin? The thing I don't like about the airplane idea, is that he probably would have seen more than three.

Possibly not, if it's a flight path that's not used often (say, only under unusual wind conditions) or if there was unusual activity recently (Katrina relief?)

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I saw something very similar last night. I suspect it was a iridum flare or some thing similar, but the strange thing was it didnt move. I am familiar with hevans above and have seen afew flares, and lots of satilites. I also have lived 20 miles out from a large airport and I know what landing lights look like when they turn on or off, its very quick like a light bulb. I live in central Maine and I saw this light around 9:30-10:30 pm, sept 9, almost due north just right of the big dipper. I don't know what this was and am very intrested to find out.

Had to check things out. ;-)