While outside this morning, just before dawn, I chanced to look up (as I often do, to watch the stars) and saw a "UFO". It wasn't some alien spacecraft, of course (at least I don't THINK it was), but a single, steady, bright (apparent magnitude of at least 0) light, moving fairly quickly (at first) from west to east. I watched it go until it dropped below the horizon, and was completely thrilled. I have to assume that it was a satellite, because of the following:
1.) It was moving quickly enough (at first) that, were it an aircraft, I would have seen the strobes and side-lights, which I did not.
2.) The further east it got, the slower it seemed to go.
3.) As it got closer to the Sun (which was still below the horizon), the dimmer it got.
It took around 2 minutes for it to get from nearly directly overhead to a point below the mountains to the east of me, 2/3 of which was from about 45 degrees from zenith to the horizon. I'm reasonably certain that it wasn't the ISS, because of the west-to-east direction, but I haven't verified this yet.
The ISS does move from west to east.
Check out your timings here (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=United+States). Hopefully it will have this mornings times.
Interesting, indeed! It seems that it was the ISS! :)
ISS Fri Jan 25/05:21 AM 13 above NNE 10 above NE
The last time I viewed the ISS, it was moving from SSE to NNW (more south-to-north than west-to-east), which was a vastly different trajectory than what I observed this morning.
Cool that you found out what it was 8)
congrats Dave.