Sept 9, 2011. My son noticed an object in the shy that was flashing different colours and didn't appear to be moving. We live in an area with plane traffic and dark skies, so I assumed it was a plane that was travelling away from us that looked like it was stationary. After 1/2 hr of watching the "plane" it was still appeared to be in the same position. While watching the object, I noticed that the colours were not typical of a regular plane navigational lights. In additional to white and red pulsating lights it also had blue and green. The object was at about 30 degrees on the horizon towards the NE and at a considerable distance.Curious, I brought out the binoculars and the object did not look like a plane and the binoculars were unsteady, so I brought out the DSLR with 300mm telephoto lens and took a couple of pictures. Because of the distance, I also mounted it on a tripod to steady the picture. When viewing the pictures on the camera it looked "disk or cylindrical" shaped, however I assumed that the camera must have been shaking and left a tracer shape. It wasn't until I brought the camera inside uploaded the pictures zoomed in and enhanced the resolution to see the background stars that the cylindrical shape was not caused by camera shake. Specifically, I looked at the stars in the background and you will notice that they are perfectly round to a pinpoint (indicating that the camera was not moving). In two of the attached pictures the object is the same disk shape and there is no movement, however in one pictures the object appears to trail something below it and move position (these are long exposure pictures approx. 30 seconds). You can also clearly see the different colours in that picture and the stars in the background are still pinpoints (again no camera shake). The object was "pulsating" rather brightly and although you cant see the different colours in two of the pictures, you can see them in the third one (where the object appears to be moving). I also noticed in the picture that the stars appear to be "blanked out" around the object. I am attributing this to the long exposure time and the intensity of the flashing which must have muted out the rather low light intensity of the distant stars around the object. It is now midnight and the object has been visible for several hours. It appears to be slowly moving across the sky which leads me to believe it is some man made object that is tracking with the rotation of the earth. But I still can't resolve the shape nor the colours, nor the reason for the weird 3rd picture. Any input or logical explanation of what the object is would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Deirdre

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