SIGHTING: BERRYNARBOR, ENGLAND (UNITED KINGDOM)

Witness Testimony

"It was a warm night in july 2018, when after a visit to my summerhouse in the village of berrynarbor (located on the edge of exmoor national park) i was helping a female friend back to the car. my attention was caught by two stars, due north, of about equal brightness, which occurred to me as wrong. as a keen astronomer, i have a good knowledge of the night sky and so i paused things to get a better look. my friend also saw the two stars, but what happened next struck us both. looking north (toward the bristol channel) we saw the star lying to the east (which was about 3 or 4 degrees distant), begin to move toward the star to the west. it moved steadily until it reached the other and the two merged into one, as if an occultation had occurred. the moving star however, did not carry on and there was no sign whatever of it continuing, which we thought was very strange considering its brightness. what did happen is that the stationary star 'erupted' into brightness (relatively speaking) and continued to 'boil' in a way that it certainly didn't when we first saw it. two friends returning to their home nearby, stopped and expressed their surprise at the flickering star. one of them said she often watched the star, because it was unusual and prominent in that part of the sky. we were both later able to confirm that the star was capella (alpha aurigae) which is noted for its shimmer. the experience of the two events, a stationary star suddenly moving and then disappearing into another had a strong effect on us, which is why after several months i feel compelled to report it. i should add that over the past few years i and others i know, have had inexplicable sightings in the area (of objects over the bristol channel) which i hope to report in due course. "