On sunday morning, about 4 a.m. eastern time me and a friend were out observing the the eastern sky when i moved my 12" dob about 5 degrees north of m21, we found a very small blinking object, it was blinking once about every 3-5 seconds and it was moving in an irregular pattern in the field of view, it stayed in the field of view for about 10 minutes it never disappeared but after looking at it for about 20 mins we went on to something else. Anyone have any idea what it could be? i have never seen anything like it.

That would have been in the direction of southern Ophiucus and about 25 to 30 degrees altitude. In that region there are many geosynchronous satellites, and that's a good possibility for what you saw.

Also, a number of satellites of mag 4.5 or brighter passed through that area between 4 and 5 a.m. local time. None of those listed at Heavens-Above, however, took more than 10 minutes to pass from horizon to horizon. Sometimes a tumbling rocket booster gives the appearance of a flashing light.

I have observed geosynchronous satellites using a friend's LX-200. He sets it to track the satellite, so the stars appear to move while the satellite holds still. Sometimes they appear to flash, though this is most likely due to seeing conditions rather than a light on or reflection from the satellite itself.

I ran some "post-dictions" for Rehoboth, MA, for 4:00 AM EDT this morning (Sunday, March 30).  I didn't come up with an obvious candidate, but I'm not sure how much leeway to allow in the time, RA and Dec, etc.  In the Clarke Belt area, along with active and dead payloads there are many upper stages of launch vehicles which could be tumbling as you observed.  There are also such objects in geosynchronous-transfer orbits (GTO) that are quasi-stationary when at apogee.  Did you estimate a magnitude of your object?  Can you narrow down the time and sky position? 

At about 5:00 AM I get an out-of-service DSP satellite.  Those are spin-stabilized and typically flash about every 2.5 seconds.  But the time is an hour off, of course.  There's no official data for it, and the amateur elements are 60 days old, but I tend to think that it would be only a few minutes off, not a full hour.

By the way, an object in orbit is of course traveling in a very stable manner.  Could you attribute what you describe as irregular motion to vibrations of the scope, eye movements, or anything else like that?

Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA

  Describe the "irregular" motion please.  This would limit drastically the number of possible objects!

I was there with rehoboth21 the night we saw our UMBO (Unidentified Moving Blinking Object ) The Blinking light was in the Sagittarius constellation around 4:21p.m. EST.  The magnitude was approximately 7.5 considering we could not locate it with the naked eye and could barely make it out with the dobsonian.  I was staying in the field of view remind you, moving in an irregular pattern

 

Normal Satellite

-----------------------------------------------

UMBO ( blinking every three seconds)

o         o

    o
  o       o

   Moving relative to the background stars?  Or because you were manually aiming the scope?

  What color was the blinking light?

 

  Was the atmosphere particularly turbulent?

It was moving relative to the stars, we should have specified it earlier.  But, yes it never left the field of view for ten minutes before we decided to observe something else.  It was blinking a whitish-blue and the atmosphere seemed turbulent. It was probably nothing, but I just wanted to find out what it was. 

Dear

In my opinion if you have calculated the time interval between each blinking it seems that the object you had noticed is an artificial (man made) thing as nothing of cosmological origion can be seen blinking and moving at the same as for as my knowledge and observation is concerned.

I think irregular blinking cant be calculated exactly as you have mentioned in your observation.

M.Umar Soomro

Hyderabad

Pakistan  

  Of course I could get the actual interval of the blinking, what do you me to do time it with a stopwatch?!  It was just an estimate.  Well obviously its artificial, I was wanted some closure and some thoughts about this thing.

  Looks like you have a UFO--

 

  An Unidentified Flying Object!

 

   Congrats.