SIGHTING: LA QUINTA, CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"I went outside on our patio to have a cigarette around 830 pm. we are avid amateur astronomers and often track the iss and iridium satellites. i notices a light moving from south to north directly overhead that was moving at about the same speed of a satellite except i'm used to satellites moving from north to south so it caught my attention. it was not a commercial aircraft because i'm used to seeing them as high as 45,000 and i can still make out the blinking of a commercial or private aircraft. there is almost zero light pollution where we live so it was, as i thought, a satellite. it had all of the characteristics of a satellite (straight line of motion, no blinking) until it would slow down and appear to "skip" from side to side. i called my wife out to witness it. she also noticed the slowing and skipping motion it made. since it was dark, it's hard to judge distance but, again, it moved and looked just like a satellite until it slowed and skipped. we watched it disappear over the horizon. total duration was about 6 minutes from when i first noticed it at about 80 degrees from the south. it was almost directly overhead and very high (in orbit or re-entering the atmosphere) if i had to make a judgment. "