Message posted by The Major on September 22, 2006 at 1:48:27 PST:
This evening, my family and I were watching satellites, as sometimes we do when there are brighter ones scheduled to fly over (they're easier for the kids to see). We were unsuccessful at catching an Iridium flare, but did catch the north-to-south moving Cosmos 1093 Rocket and the south-to-north moving Okean O Rocket. Just as the Okean O Rocket was within 10 degrees of passing overhead, we saw a bright point light source appear and intersect the path of the Okean O, rapidly moving from west-to-east. The light dimmed to a faint point, then at regular intervals, it would return to the brightness at which we had first seen it, each pulse lasting a second, perhaps a shade shorter than a second. The light was yellowish-white and was definitely not a strobe. No other lights (eg. red or green) could be seen. The path of travel appeared to be straight with a constant speed. There were no immediate or delayed aircraft sounds audible.
It is not uncommon to see high-flying jets pass over Hawaii from west to east, but not at this speed. If it was high altitude, this aircraft was booking it! There is no way for me to know how high this aircraft was flying, but since there were no audible sounds, and it was almost overhead, it had to be very high. I have never seen a high altitude jet move that fast, nor have bright enough lights to rival the brightest stars. I have never seen a low-earth satellite move that fast, either. The initial sighting occurred at 19:20:30, give or take 5 seconds, and a look at the list of visible satellites with magnitudes greater than 4.5 shows nothing moving over Hawaii from west to east anywhere near that time.
While I am puzzled about the nature of this aircraft, I am certain there is a terrestrial, and probably quite boring, explanation. It would be fun to imagine it being a high-altitude overflight of a black project, but I seriously doubt that is the case. The only thing I can say with any confidence is that I have never seen anything quite like it before, but even at my age, I haven't seen EVERYTHING yet!
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