I would say this is Sirius, but that’s in Canis Major…
This does not sound plausible.
Where are you located? Can you first eliminate local, i.e. earthly, explanations first?
... for your consideration.
Okay, it was a regular cigarette, right?! /s
The only thing I can find is news of a star in Ursa Major exploding last September. (21 million years ago)
Probably happened a long time ago.
Just kidding, it DID happen a LONG time ago.
Makes me feel so miniscule knowing what I see has taken years and millenniums of years for its image to arrive to me.
One could only fantasize that their solar system was grappling with a decisive social and political unrest globally, and then the Lord decides to just toss all the marbles back up and let them start all over again from cosmic dust.
Somewhere in time others will watch our demise, “Oh Mommy, look a shooting star!”
Probably a meteor - The Perseid peak was just two days ago.
Perseid meteor shower
Sure he didn’t say - “I was standing out by the still and when I took a sip from the big dipper it was like an exploding star?”
Bush did it
You sure you weren’t watching a 2008 Obama ad being bounced back to earth? Hope and Change worked just as well there as it did here . . .
Double rainbow! What does it MEAN?!
I’ll second the Iridium Flare guess. I saw one a few years ago, concurrent with a passing of the ISS. It did really look like a quick cosmic explosion. Upon seeing it in the same general area of the sky as the passing space station, I went back in and checked it out on heavens-above.com - sure enough, that’s what had happened! A bonus twofer.
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We view the night sky through the "lens/prism" of our own atmosphere, which always causes some significant refraction and/or magnification of the stellar lights we are observing.
This is why the stars "twinkle"... and the movement/changes in the upper layers make the light change colors... and even disappear/reappear within a few seconds.
Wavering/changing starlight has caused airliners to change course (fearing another aircraft that wasn't there) and also report UFO's.
Nearing sunrise, the upper atmosphere receives the first touches of sunlight. This pre-dawn heating cycle makes some significant 'waves' in the upper air.
Ergo...
The stars we are watching (especially those low in the sky) will really seem to dance with these subtle changes in our "lens/prism". This includes an apparent and sudden brightening--followed by a near "disappearance" only to return to normal a few seconds later.
There ya go....
...Just trying to help...
... still waiting for the uranus joke ...
Maybe it was a rock from the Perseid meteor shower colliding with a passing spaceship. Anything’s possible.
Probably a meteor.
The Perseid shower is going on now.
Stellar explosions tend to be like the Energizer Bunny and keep going and going... see http://suite101.com/article/the-crab-nebula-supernova-1054-ad-a23371. The event witnessed in 1054AD was visible for 23 days in full sunlight, and completely faded away after 2 years observation.
Stellar explosions tend to be like the Energizer Bunny and keep going and going... see http://suite101.com/article/the-crab-nebula-supernova-1054-ad-a23371. The event witnessed in 1054AD was visible for 23 days in full sunlight, and completely faded away after 2 years observation.