My dog is small and has a knack for getting in trouble, so when she asked to go out at 3:45am this morning, I went with her, as always.

The sky was clear, filled with brilliant stars. The motion of a shooting star instantly drew my gaze up. That’s when I noticed a jet, approaching from the west with a trajectory that would take it directly overhead.

The jet appeared as three lights, arranged in a triangle. The weird and interesting thing about it, the reason it’s worth writing up in a blog post, is that the jet appeared to shift slightly back and forth as it passed across the stationary star field. Well, that’s interesting! I thought. Obviously an optical illusion — one that ceased as the jet passed overhead and continued east — but it made me think of the occasional report of a “UFO”** moving back and forth as if unaffected by momentum.

Two other odd bits about this incident: What was that jet doing flying west to east directly over the island at ~3:45am? That is not a usual route. And why was it flying so low? It was low enough that I could easily see the triangle of lights. Also, the sound of the engines very closely tracked the position of the plane, instead of being widely offset (due to lag in the speed of sound), as happens when a jet is flying at a more usual cruising altitude. My guess is it was a military plane, part of RIMPAC maybe, or maybe the crew just needed some hours in the air.

Anyway, this is the sort of thing that occupies my mind at 4am, and makes it hard to go back to sleep. 🙂

** As we all know, UFO stands for “Unidentified Flying Object.” It does not stand for “alien spaceship.” I cringe every time someone assumes the latter. When I was a teen, my dad was licensed to fly small planes. When I flew with him, it was my job to help look out for other planes and helicopters. When you’re in the air, you want to identify all the flying objects in the vicinity, the better to avoid a mid-air collision. 😉

Posted on: Thursday, August 27th, 2020 at 2:23 pm
Categories: General.