Weird satellites, or ????

[NM_Shooter]

I just found out that I witnessed something very odd last fall.  I didn't think anything about it, until somebody told me tonight that it was unusual. 

My buddy Aaron and I were in the process of dragging a cow elk up a hill in the Rockies to my truck at about 11pm.  He had shot her that evening, and we decided to get it quartered and back to camp.  It was a long night... thank God for Coleman lanterns. 

Anyway, I was carrying a hindquarter on my shoulder, and was determined not make another stop.  I made it up to my truck, dropped the leg, and stood there huffing and puffing.  I put out the lantern, grabbed my water bottle and was sitting on the tailgate looking up. 

This was up at 10,000 feet of elevation, crystal clear cold night (clouds were coming in and it snowed in about an hour, but not yet...).   

As I was looking up, I noticed a satellite moving overhead.  Not too unusual.... we see them all the time up there.  But then I saw another, then another, and another.  My buddy Aaron has better eyes, and he picked out and pointed out more to me.  We saw roughly a dozen to 15 satellites all moving across the sky, perfectly parallel with one another.  They were spaced out maybe only 5 degrees across the path, and strewn 40 degrees or more front to back.

Back in 1986 or so, I saw a satellite come back in, break up, and 50 or 60 pieces streamed across the night sky.  That display left smoke trails behind it.  This cluster of stuff we saw left no smoke trails. 

I have been told that at most, three satellites will fly together.  This was way, way, more.  Perfect synchronicity. 

Someone told me that these might have been very high flying planes.  If so, they were significantly out of formation. 

No, I don't think they were little green men!  They looked very much like every other satellite / ISS sighting that I have seen. 

Very weird. 

-f-

[glenn kangiser]

Interesting, Frank, but remember NM is the home of Roswell...

[MountainDon]

There are a huge number in orbit according to this site.

http://celestrak.com/satcat/boxscore.asp



It would be a cool experience to see one burn up as long as it missed the viewer.  

[NM_Shooter]

I sent an email to my buddy to do a sanity check, he replied to the folks that I was discussing this with as follows..
<snip>
Yes, I remember what Frank's talking about.  It was rather odd.  I've certainly never seen anything like it and I've spent a fair bit of time in the mountains here and in Nebraska looking at the night sky.

I don't remember any pattern either, but they were strung out across a big arc of sky in the direction of travel.  Laterally they were pretty close together.  They were moving east to west, seeming too high and too fast for any sort of airplane.  Satellites seemed like the only logical answer, but why there'd have been so many doesn't make any sense.
<snip>

There is lots of stuff in space.. most viable, some junk.  The unusual part was to see so much at one time, all moving in exactly the same direction and speed.  NM has tons of satellite designers here (Los Alamos, Sandia Labs, DDES, PNP Innovations, UNM, Kirtland AFB, Applied Technology) I mentioned it to a group of grey beards from DDES, and they were skeptical. 

If I had to guess, I would guess it is a military constellation doing high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar stuff.   

[gandalfthegrey]

Interesting, Frank, but remember NM is the home of Roswell...

But not Area 51.  That is located in northern Nevada.

Comminucation Satelites are spaced at 5 degree seperation at 136 miles altitude above the equater.   :

[NM_Shooter]

Comminucation Satelites are spaced at 5 degree seperation at 136 miles altitude above the equater.   :

Those are geostationary.... the ones I saw were moving really fast!

[glenn kangiser]

Any chance you know the day, Frank?

Likely some top secret thing the gov is working on - the disappearing trillions from the pentagon, so we won't find reference to it but you never know.

Area 51 is not far from NM by jet engine time and I had a friend who worked in area 51.  He says we don't have a clue what is going on there. 

[glenn kangiser]

http://www.mufon.com/mufonreports.htm

Search above

[NM_Shooter]

Any chance you know the day, Frank?

Likely some top secret thing the gov is working on - the disappearing trillions from the pentagon, so we won't find reference to it but you never know.

Area 51 is not far from NM by jet engine time and I had a friend who worked in area 51.  He says we don't have a clue what is going on there. 

October 3, 2009.  Roughly 11pm Mountain Time.  Could have been later by an hour, earlier by 30 minutes.  11 is probably pretty close.  That was a long night.  I lost the elk tag off the leg on the first trip up the hill, and we spent a lot of time looking for it going up and down the hill.  By the time we were done, I was soaked in sweat and elk blood and exhausted.  On our last trip up the hill it started snowing.  We had GPS'd the first location that we noticed that the tag was missing.  We found it the next morning 15 feet from that spot, half covered in snow.  Coleman lanterns are okay for navigation, but trying to find anything in the middle of the brush with them is darn near impossible due to the glare.

When we saw the satellites, we were looking south, but they were very high in the sky (maybe 75 degrees off the horizon).  My buddy remembers east to west, but it might have been SE to NW. 

We satellite watch a lot up there.  If I was forced to bet, I would say it was a satellite, as it looked exactly like that....very fast, very high.  No flashing of nav lights, just a steady illumination. 

[NM_Shooter]

Rio Arriba County.  We were all smiles until the dissection and transportation started.  We gutted her and spread the carcass to cool while we went down and had dinner and cleaned up a bit around 7pm.  By 1pm I was wondering "what the hell were we thinking".



A long time ago, I once asked an old timer where the best place was to shoot an elk.  He told me "Right behind the pickup truck".  I concur.  For those who care, that was shot with a 7mm Mag, at about 70 yards.  Full penetration, almost removed the opposite shoulder.  She didn't go far and didn't linger.  We lost a little meat, but the straps were saved 

I'm going to build my own game cart before i go again.  The ones I have seen don't have enough ground clearance.