Did anyone see the weird "cloud" about 30 degrees up in the E sky this
morning? My wife & I were on the way to the gym ~ 5:45am and I was soaking
in the still beautiful morning line-up of Jupiter, Mars & Venus when I
spied an odd "cloud" about the size of the full moon down and to the lower
left of Venus. It was relatively bright, ~ +1 or +2 mag though quite
disbursed. Round-ish in shape.
It sure looked like a broken up comet but I knew nothing was currently in
that part of the sky. While there was no central bright nucleus I could
still see light and dark patches.
I noticed as I watched it it stayed steady in the same spot while the
background stars moved against it indicating it was most likely within our
atmosphere and rotating with the Earth.
I figured maybe it was the remnants of a missile or sounding rocket test
from probably White Sands perhaps high up enough over NM to catch some
early sunlight. I did some Googling and haven't found anything.
Did anyone else see it?
Wayne in Phoenix
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