At 8:15 PM (Pacific Time) in Danville, California I was in the backyard and happened to be glancing up towards the sky. There was a lot of ambient light coming from city lights so only the brightest stars were visible. I was looking at the star Polaris towards the North East and instead of seeing the one star (Polaris) I saw two. Then one of them started to move slowly towards the North East. The object initially looked like a star, then momentarily increased in brightness (white light) to the point where it was the brightest object in the sky at that moment (the moon wasn't visible yet). Then after just a few seconds the light dimmed and then changed colors from white to red. It continued to dim a bit more but remained red until it slowly faded off to the North East. The entire event lasted a little less than 5 minutes and was clearly witnessed by both myself and my girlfriend. At the same time as the event, there were airplanes in the sky as well, and there was a distinct difference between the object and the airplanes. My initial thoughts were that it could be a satellite, however they are almost impossible to see in my area because the sky never gets dark enough. Then I thought it could be either the space shuttle or the ISS, but according to spaceflight1.nasa.gov neither the shuttle nor the ISS would have been visible in northern California on that date.

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