I reported this 'UFO' (for want of a better term) sighting to a local UFO reporting group.

I first became aware of the object as I walked down the road before it got light (with the dogs) when it appeared from behind a clump of trees to my right about 150-250 feet away. It traversed my line of sight right to left at a low elevation - I was unable to judge its size or range but I would characterise it as 'large' or, less likely, very close. It seemed to me to fly quite slowly - much, much slower than a shooting star for instance. The sighting occured several years ago and somewhere I have a copy of my report written at the time. The object disappeared behind a thick cluster of trees to my left, having travelled horizontally with no discernable loss of altitude. The sky was more or less clear at the time - and as I say, it was still dark.
The object appeared to me to be lozenge shaped, that is, a flattened diamond shape, with its longer axis along the line-of-flight. The colour was a remarkable bright emerald green shading to whitish-yellow at the aft end. The thing left a faint luminous whitish trail behind it - which remained at about 2 to 4 object lengths in extent. There was no discernable sound and no discernable change in any feature during the brief period of my observation.
As I am a novice in this kind of thing, (and, reiterating to some extent) I note several points of interest to me regarding this sighting:
The object was entirely silent.
The object appeared large and was certainly very noticeable from my location, especially on account of its brilliant and unusual colour.
The trajectory was low and appeared to remain parallel to the horizon for the duration of the sighting.
No other reports, or gossip, arose from this sighting to my knowledge - but this is a countrified, lightly-populated area. However, in a way, this lack of other reports is the most surprising feature of the whole incident.
I have determined what I observed COULD meet the criteria for either returning space junk or a bolide - but I remain dubious on account of the unexpectedly slow speed and exceptionally low, unexpectedly flat trajectory (but am willing to stand corrected).
Anyone else had a sighting like this and subsequently received a convincing, authoritative explanation?

what does this have to do with grass skirts and goats?




alien

It certainly sounds like a meteor to me. I have never been lucky enough to see a green meteor but I have met several people that I have. I once saw something very similar to the description that you have given, except in my case it was blood red rather than green (I was surrounded by 10 amateur astronomers at the time and there was time for me to get their attention and point it out).

Meteors can burn up at varying heights in the atmosphere, anywhere from 15 to 140km up. When they burn up at a higher altitude they seem to move more slowly across the sky and in a more flat trajectory.

Most meteors are only the size of sand grains. I am no expert
but I suspect that what you saw was an object that was very slightly larger.

We had an rare meteor shower here in the States a couple years back...It was the strongest Leonid since the 1881 shower. The average reached up to 1000 meteor per minute in some places. I saw a couple green ones

Edited title in order to reflect the true nature of the thread and provide a clearer meaning to what is being addressed.

Thanks for the comments/observations.
I am sorry I mentioned green now because that was not intended as the crux of my mystification - though I can see how that would be of interest to some.
I too have seen many green meteors - mostly in Europe, but I have seen a few up here in the northlands too. These shooting stars/meteors/meteorites, whether emerald green or yellowish/whitish, whisk across a portion of the sky in the blink of an eye and are soon lost to sight in my experience. I have though, followed the passage of a 'shooting star' from the crown of the sky until, undiminished in intensity, it disappeared from view over the horizon, but this persistence of phenomenon seems to be the exception. I have never before been able to resolve the actual shape of such an object.
To reiterate, what made my particular sighting unusual, was: Its apparent great mass (deduced from observed image size, to the extent I was able to see its shape - the lozenge form, coupled with very low speed of transit). The flatness of trajectory and very low altitude (unless it was much further away than I supposed and the size of a planetoid) is also a part of the puzzle, but this may be typical of vagrant aerial bodies for all I know and appears odd to me merely because of my deplorable ignorance of celestial mechanics.
So - well defined shape, slow speed of transit and unusual trajectory. Yes, the colour is not all that unusual for aerial bodies, (including returning space junk), but not to mention it would surely have been a serious omission.

As I said, this is not unusual of a meteor at a higher altitude.

The trajectory and speed part could be addressed by your perspective of the object. It may have been very far away, maybe something passing through the atmosphere way high over the place on what would be your horion, if u see what i mean. A satellite catching the sun maybe?

It would make the object even more incredible if you were right and it was much further away than I envisage, Box, because then it would have to be even larger than I tentatively assigned it in order for me to have discerned its shape, and to have thought it large - this would make it absolutely monumental (as large or larger than a Borg ship even).
Could anyone on the surface of earth possess the visual discrimination to pick out a satellite in orbit with the naked eye when it wan't lit by the sun, or, conceivably, lit by the moon?
A satellite in its proper orbit, an artificial satellite, when viewed from earth appears to move very slowly across the sky and is otherwise virtually indistinguishable from a lesser star to the naked eye (which device I was using at the time). It was travelling very slowly compared with a shooting star, too slow to be one, but faster, and it was much, much larger, than any satellite appears when in proper orbit. As a rough gauge, I would say its speed could be likened to that of a crow flying across my field of view seen at a range of, say, 70-100 feet.
The fact it appeared to move slowly without seeming to lose altitude suggests to me it must have been quite large (I have assumed it was neither able to sustain itself in the atmosphere nor was under intelligent control - although it is remotely possible that it was).
(I should mention that from many years of Royal Observer Corps service I am reasonably competent in assessing size, type and form, and range, heading, speed and altitude of aerial craft.)
Thanks for the input everyone.
From the time of my sighting, and failing any overwhelming reason to assume a more exotic explanation, I have leaned towards returning space junk as the explanation. However, I would still like an authoritative explanation for the apparent (to me) unlikely mass/altitude/speed/trajectory element of the mystery.

Not at all. A large object at high altitude can take a considerable time to cross the sky. Also was the object near the zenith when you saw it? In my experience a meteor near the zenith appears to move more slowly than one near the horizon (possibly due to the lack of visual clues for the brain to estimate speed?) This report is classic meteor.

I think what he is getting at is this:

He has seen green meteors before, and would know when he sees one again.

Maybe not?

Mind Freak is right in that respect.

When I said it transited my field of view on a 'low trajectory' I meant it appeared to me to be 'flying' close to the ground. Since it was 'all lit up' and leaving a trail I have to make the reasonable assumption that when it appeared it was already well within planet's gaseous mantle. Although I hate to have to repeat myself, I knew I needed to remake the point, so I reiterated the low altitude aspect in saying: 'it appeared from behind a clump of trees to my right about 150-250 feet away' - meaning if my line of sight viewed the thing 'flying' at, say, half the height of the tree as it appeared to me, then, etc. etc.
Waspie_Dwarf you'll find zenith means high in the sky and therefore closer to the opposite to what I indicated. I am familiar with the Zenith aircraft of course, but so far as my total understanding of the word itself - I was once told 'zenith' meant as high as you can get without starting down the other side. The creature that told me that was also a dwarf as it happens, actually an exceedingly ugly one, as many of you are, but I have no reason to doubt the veracity of its assertion.
Despite what you say Waspie_Dwarf the concensus is that aerial objects large enough for their shape to be discerned, and 'flying' slow enough to be diligently examined, do not fall within the 'classic meteor' category. I guess you will just have to trust me that it was travelling slowly and/or was quite large, because it was. In 60 years I have never seen anything remotely like that thing, and although I have never thought to keep a count of my sightings, I must have seen hundreds if not thousands of aerial objects of varying descriptions that gave strong indications of being neither aircraft, nor Earth-born animals, birds, or insects, nor known planetary and celestial objects, nor man-made satellites, nor dwarves shot from cannons.
As I said before, my own guess is this was returning space debris.