Dean
Adept Dabbler
On December 27, 2018, News 2, the NBC affiliate in Charleston, South Carolina, posted a story and a video reportedly taken on Christmas Eve by Debra Thomson of Kiawah Island, a coastal island southeast of Charleston, purporting to show a bright round aerial object, "red in color with a bit of orange." The video contains an audio track in which Thomson commented as she was recording. The website story contains additional quotes from Thomson, including a claim that she called a local airport (it is not clear just when she called), and that "told her they didn’t see anything on the radar." She said that she first saw the object in the northwest about 9:30 PM on December 24.
During preparation of the December 27 story, the reporter, Tim Renaud, contacted the College of Charleston Observatory staff, which suggested that Mars was visible in the west that evening, is red, etc. However, according to a January 3, 2019 update to the story, in response to the original story the station was contacted the station by a resident of Edisto Beach (which as coastal point about 10 miles southwest of Kiawah Island), Pat Martin, who reported seeing "a huge bright orange ball," unusual enough to photograph, apparently at about 6 AM on December 25, but in the southeast.
For some reason, the reporter also saw fit to quote emails that he received from California and Illinois, from people who had seen the original report on the Internet and wanted to tell him about bright lights they had seen in the sky.
The SkyView Free app confirms that at Charleston, Mars was above the western horizon until about 11:40 PM on Christmas eve. But another app says that its apparent magnitude would have been only about 0.36, which is not all that bright, with angular size of 7.8 arcsec. Local sunrise on December 25 was about 7:20 AM.
During preparation of the December 27 story, the reporter, Tim Renaud, contacted the College of Charleston Observatory staff, which suggested that Mars was visible in the west that evening, is red, etc. However, according to a January 3, 2019 update to the story, in response to the original story the station was contacted the station by a resident of Edisto Beach (which as coastal point about 10 miles southwest of Kiawah Island), Pat Martin, who reported seeing "a huge bright orange ball," unusual enough to photograph, apparently at about 6 AM on December 25, but in the southeast.
A resident on Edisto Beach told us their room lit up brighter than the full moon at about 6:00 a.m. "In the southeast, in the sky over my dock, was a huge bright orange ball,” said Pat Martin. “I watched it for a while and tried to take a picture. Thought it a Christmas Miracle.” Martin also sent us pictures of what appears to be a large bright light against the black sky.
For some reason, the reporter also saw fit to quote emails that he received from California and Illinois, from people who had seen the original report on the Internet and wanted to tell him about bright lights they had seen in the sky.
The SkyView Free app confirms that at Charleston, Mars was above the western horizon until about 11:40 PM on Christmas eve. But another app says that its apparent magnitude would have been only about 0.36, which is not all that bright, with angular size of 7.8 arcsec. Local sunrise on December 25 was about 7:20 AM.
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