Disappearing and reappearing star

[Kateglover]

I was watching the sky from my lounge room window one night and I noticed a 'star' that was exceptionally brighter than the others that were out that night. I kept watching it and I noticed that it was starting to become very dim and until it completely disappeared, only to reappear again a few minutes later. It then repeated the cycle of going from extremely bright to completely disappearing and so on... I got sick of it so I decided to try and find research on it but came up empty... Any thoughts?

[toast]

Any thoughts?

Clouds.

[Lucas Cooper Merrin]

Morse code from a stranded astronaut

[ChrLzs]

Very likely, Toast is correct... No stars or planets do this by themselves, but scattered clouds certainly can give that effect. Aircraft might give the effect by coming right at you with landing lights and then peeling off, and satellites or other space junk may sometimes 'tumble' and thus have a repeating pattern to their reflections of sunlight.. but they travel across the sky at a reasonable rate - you would have mentioned it..

Anyway, given your rough location, the date and time, and the direction your window faces, we can tell you exactly what should have appeared there, using free planetarium programs like Stellarium. Then you can use other tools like FlightAware to identify aircraft, or Heavens Above to identify the International Space Station, Iridium Flares and all the other satellites up there..

[Bendy Demon]

Had that happen to me a few months ago, thought my vision was going then noticed it was happening to other things in the night sky, just a thin layer of wispy clouds that I did not see until I looked at the crescent moon. Some things are hard to see at night.