{"id":1119,"date":"2012-09-22T19:52:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T01:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrider.com\/blog\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2025-03-12T18:25:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T18:25:18","slug":"photos-of-the-day-ufo-over-albuquerque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/2012\/09\/22\/photos-of-the-day-ufo-over-albuquerque\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos of the day – UFO over Albuquerque 9.22.2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Got a call from a friend just a few minutes ago and he started out with a “weird science” question. \u00a0He told me to go out and look at the moon and then look just a bit to the north west of it and tell him what was I seeing.<\/p>\n

I saw it, and was pretty dumbfounded. \u00a0It was about as bright as the moon, but about a quarter of the size and not possibly a star. \u00a0I told him I’d call him back after I ran into the house to grab my big lens to try and see what it was.<\/p>\n

There it is, our own bright light in the sky, long after sunset, but still as bright as the moon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At first I thought I could see a gondola below it. \u00a0I called it a gas balloon, but it turns out on magnification, it is an ordinary weather balloon. \u00a0Its not as bright as the moon in this image because I wanted to see the detail.<\/p>\n

Closer<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And closer yet, you can faintly see a red\u00a0tether below the balloon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thanks Rodger, that was cool. \u00a0It’s a great item to add to my sky collection here in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

Edit – KOB posted a story about this that states the balloon is part of a NASA project called WASP and that it started out in Fort Sumner and slowly drifted west at high altitude. \u00a0They published a nice image of the balloon, which alas, is now long gone. Since I caught it just before the sun set at that high altitude I couldn’t see the translucent nature of the balloon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Got a call from a friend just a few minutes ago and he started out with a “weird science” question. \u00a0He told me to go out and look at the moon and then look just a bit to the north west of it and tell him what was I seeing. I saw it, and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,21],"tags":[197,202],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-albuquerque-and-environs","category-new-mexico-sky","tag-ufo-over-albuquerque","tag-weather-balloon-over-albuquerque"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2461,"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions\/2461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrider.com\/oldBODblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}