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[jeremy]

The Moon was looking so great tonight, I had to setup my scope to study it a bit. However I noticed shortly in, these shadow specs crossing in front of it periodically. At first I thought it was just little eye floats that my eye was producing. I then started to focus just on one spot and try not to move my eye, and I was seeing more shadow specs moving in front of the moon.

At this point I had to dismiss my eye being the issue, so I pulled out my tripod and setup my point and click that does video and pointed it at my eye piece. Turns out these things were real as the camera captured it, and not my eyes playing tricks on me.

Some video I captured the black shadows seem fairly blurry and large (relatively speaking), while some seemed small and crisper. All seemed to be moving straight in whatever direction they were heading, and generally at a similar speed.

My best guess is that I am seeing Earth satellites of sorts passing between me and the moon. However I would swear on one of my views through the eyepiece, I thought what I was watching fly across the moon was also casting a shadow on it. I only saw it once, seems improbable, but I'm pretty sure that's what I saw.

Given the frequency I saw these, I imagine others here have too. Is my satellite theory accurate?

[Centaur]

What is your location, Jeremy? Today the smoke from a wildfire in Minnesota descended upon Chicagoland and the surrounding region. I saw those streaks too and suspect they were ashes from the fire. See my photo of the Moon rising tonight through the smoky sky: www.CurtRenz.com/moon

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Jeremy,

My experience...

astronomer.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Unexplained&action=display&thread=1568

...and they weren't satellites.

[jeremy]

I was in the city downtown when I was viewing the moon. I captured video of the shadows so I am going to pull them together in a consolidated clip which will show what I saw. Once I get uploaded I will post a link and people can weigh in. I'd be interested to see how similar you think these items are to what you saw Joe, however I couldn't see the objects in the dark sky, only when they crossed the moon, and they seemed out of focus compared to the moon which had me thinking they were closer objects probably orbiting Earth. I'll let you all be the judge though once I post.

[RobbW]

I see dark objects fly across the face of the moon all the time whenever I'm viewing Luna. I just assume they are satellites zipping across the sky. I'm not ready to break out my tin foil hat just yet!

[Centaur]

Sept 15, 2011 4:14:27 GMT -6 jeremy said:

I'd be interested to see how similar you think these items are to what you saw Joe, however I couldn't see the objects in the dark sky, only when they crossed the moon, and they seemed out of focus compared to the moon which had me thinking they were closer objects probably orbiting Earth.

For anything beyond a few tens of meters the focus is essentially on infinity. The focus setting for viewing an artificial satellite would be exactly the same as for our natural satellite (Moon). I earlier suggested ashes from the wildfire in Minnesota. Also at this time of year flocks of birds begin to migrate with much of that at night at high altitude.

[Paulie pchris00]

That's weird, but I can't say I've ever noticed anything like that.