SIGHTING: REDMOND, OREGON (UNITED STATES)
Witness Testimony
"During the early morning of Dec. 14, 2015, I was photographing meteors of the Geminid Meteor Shower. I was taking a 20 second exposures of an area in the southeastern sky. When I decided to end the session, I brought the camera inside and went to sleep (it was past 4:30 am at this time). The next day I went through the images to find those with meteors in the image. While looking for meteors, I noticed something moving in successive frames. As I looked further, I saw the object in 118 consecutive images. It appears as an approximate 7th magnitude dot and moves from the southeast towards the eastern horizon. As it approaches the final frame, the object appears to speed up. The final frame shows the object when it is approximately 35-40 degrees above the horizon. When the object is first seen, it is a small dot, but as the frames progress, the object's tracking length (light trail it left) appears to increase. After noticing the object, I check the Near Earth Object database to see if there was an asteroid passage near the time I was shooting and did not find anything for that date and time frame which in any way corresponded to the time I was made the images. Not finding anything to identify the object, I sent a description of the what I photographed which included the times, number of images and offered the images to the NEO office if they wanted them. I have not received an reply to this date. I have also shown the images (I made a small mp4 of the images - small is a misnomer...it is about 5 meg in size and reduced in resolution) to friends of mine who are amateur astronomers and they have no idea of what it is. I am attaching the small video, but be warned, the object is difficult to see, but can be seen. Although the real time movement of the object took about 45 minutes, the video compresses that movement to slightly more than 30 seconds. I have marked the area it first appears with a red arrow. The object is very difficult to see in the final 20 or so images, but it is there and can be seen better in the original files. Each of the original files is approximately 5.9 meg in size with a resolution of 5184x3456 pixels. The total size of the 118 files is approximately 1.9 gigs. If you are interested in the original files, contact me and we will discuss how your can get them. I really would like to know what it was in the images. I know it wasn't a meteor, nor was it a satellite. I am hoping your organization might be able to identify the object. If it is unknown, maybe it can further someone's research. "
