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Tue 17 Feb, 2009 11:49 pm
I know that certain planets glow green to the naked eye during specific and well-documented trips around the sun in relation to Earth. But, so far I can't find out what the object I saw this evening was. I think that Venus is supposed to be visible in the evening now, but it shines white or pinkish.
Tonight, just a little after sunset (maybe 2 hours) a bright and green spot hung in the Western sky. It was there for quite some time (I drove home from the Cape and could see it all along while heading West-ish).
Could it have been the comet Lulin?
@littlek,
Kryptonite. Sorry I had make a joke.
It could have been aliens. Did you experience any missing time after seeing the object? Were there helicopters? Men in black, etc?
Maybe it was a green flash.. Pretty cold, so it couls have been frozen, but probably not.. Also, if it was staying in the right place, it was NOT a comet.
littlek wrote:Could it have been the comet Lulin?
Well, the direction matches, and the Lulin is supposed to look greenish. Does its color in this picture look about right to you?
Source: SkyAndTelescope.com
Here's the full article.
@Thomas,
Article says Lulin could be as bright as 5th magnitude. That's not bright at all. I've been seeing something similar to littlek's observation for the past week, or thereabouts, but not greenish, though I'll look again tomorrow night. What I've been seeing is 1st magnitude +.
I cant see it. I think you is makin' it all up.
@dadpad,
Maybe you're too far south.
@dadpad,
You're on the wrong side of the planet, dad. Bet you can't see Polaris either.
@littlek,
Possibly the Great Gazoo?
@roger,
Hm. I consulted
Sternzeit, an astronomical series in
Deutschlandfunk radio. The color and the brightness Roger reports matches
Spica, the brightest star in constellation
virgo. But the direction is off. Interesting ....
@Thomas,
On reflection, maybe the direction isn't off after all. Skymaps.com says that on February 16,
Lulin is 3 degrees from
Spica (
PDF here). So when littlek observed it on the 17th,
Spica and
Lulin were probably still pretty close.
@littlek,
Almost everyone who sees a bright star in the western sky just after sunset is seeing Venus. Normally it is whitish, but something in the atmosphere could have made it seem greenish. You weren't looking through a tinted windshield were you
No, not a tinted windshield - my car is far too low-budget for that.
Well, I'll just go with Venus then.....
@littlek,
I still would not rule out a UFO. Jimmy Carter saw a UFO and the military tried to persuade him he saw Venus. Ya just never know.
@littlek,
It's a common enough phenomenon in northern latitudes, called a "green flash". You very often see it from airplanes even at relatively lower latitudes. It's been photographed countless times - very surprised you never heard of it before:
Quote:Green flashes are real (not illusory) phenomena seen at sunrise and sunset, when some part of the Sun suddenly changes color (at sunset, from red or orange to green or blue). The word “flash” refers to the sudden appearance and brief duration of this green color, which usually lasts only a second or two at moderate latitudes.
http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/
@High Seas,
The problem is, green flashes last for seconds. What littlek observed lasted for hours.
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