March 11, 1998: Sky Sights

One of many trip reports under the SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie Grow.
Email me at ajs@frii.com.
Last update: March 19, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1997_0728-29_FortCollinsFlood.htm)

(From email sent to a friend in response to them writing, "My first UFO!":)

I'm a bit jealous. I've spent a lot of time outdoors at night, including sleeping on mountaintops, and I've not seen a UFO yet.

But I have seen:

What looked like an explosion in the middle of the Denver skyglow. It turned out to be the brilliantly orange cusp of a thin crescent moon, rising. I just happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time.
Walking at night, alone, head down, skies dark and clear, a sudden flash like lightning. (This really gets my attention when I'm in the mountains, grin.) I looked up to see the remnants of a meteor trail.
An aurora, pale green and red, that showed up on film, from southern Colorado, during the last solar maximum.
Last month, the best meteor of my life, streaking across dark, starry skies, just above Old Faithful's steam cloud, just before an eruption. My camera was mounted on a tripod and ready to go. Alas the meteor was just out of the field, and I hadn't yet opened the shutter anyway. But I did get an excellent picture of the following eruption with Sirius and other bright stars nearby.
Deep in forest, eyes staring back at me from the darkness, illuminated by my headlamp... Whoa! No lions or bears yet, they've always turned out to be cows or bighorn sheep, or one time, a fox.