2008 March 14, Friday 7pm. White Beach at Puerto Galera. While walking along the beach, Clarisse mentioned that she's looking at an unusual thing in the sky. It wasn't a plane and it looked exactly like a star surrounded by a ringlike cloud. I said "It's a plane, coming at us". She said "No" and pointed to a smaller moving lighted dot near the "thing"--"That's a plane!" And sure enough--the plane/dot was moving fast but the star with a ring--didn't. I said, maybe we're seeing a nova-and explained about exploding stars and how the event actually happened billions/millions of years ago and it took the light this long --so that's why we see it.
This picture (not the actual physical nova, but maybe a gamma ray impression) -- looks like what we saw:
We stare at it some more. At the back of my mind i'll google it when we get back to the hotel--expecting to see many pictures of it from astronomers. The Puerto Galera, Mindoro beach doesn't have much light and the ringed-star was over the dark waters. The "ringed star" stayed visible for about 30mins and faded away. The next day-at the same hour-we didn't see it there any more - so it couldn't be a star with a non-moving cloud over it.
So what, NASA, could we have been the only 2 people who've seen the farthest thing in the universe w/o using any instruments other than our unaided eyes?
As Neo would say "Woah!"
See what the people who didn't see it are saying at BoingBoing.
This picture (not the actual physical nova, but maybe a gamma ray impression) -- looks like what we saw:
We stare at it some more. At the back of my mind i'll google it when we get back to the hotel--expecting to see many pictures of it from astronomers. The Puerto Galera, Mindoro beach doesn't have much light and the ringed-star was over the dark waters. The "ringed star" stayed visible for about 30mins and faded away. The next day-at the same hour-we didn't see it there any more - so it couldn't be a star with a non-moving cloud over it.
So what, NASA, could we have been the only 2 people who've seen the farthest thing in the universe w/o using any instruments other than our unaided eyes?
As Neo would say "Woah!"
See what the people who didn't see it are saying at BoingBoing.
