Вулкан Попокатепетль проглотил сигару

Allen Epling, Amateur Astronomer and Retired Science Teacher, Virgie, Kentucky: It was October 16, 2012, at 2 PM. I was in the house and had neighbors visiting, two couples visiting with their granddaughter. The little girl, I think, was 6-years-old and out on our patio. She called for her parents to come out and look at a ‘funny looking plane up in the sky.’

So they all went outside and were looking up. I was sitting here watching TV and they called out, ‘Allen, come out here and look at this!’ So I went outside and what I saw was like a mirror in the sky, it was so bright reflecting sunlight. It looked like a very bright star, but I knew it had to be something else. So I said, ‘Let me go get my binoculars.’ I have some large binoculars, so I got those out and as soon as I looked through the binoculars, I knew it was something special.

I had never seen an object that looked like that before. It’s obviously not a plane and not a helicopter and I could find no reason that it would be flying or hovering that high in the sky without any sort of propulsion.

So I got my big telescope and this is a telescope I’ve had for 20 to 25 years that I purchased just for astronomy use. I’ve taken pictures with it and done quite a bit of observing with it. I’ve got one of my eyepieces out that’s rated at about 150 X magnification.