What did I see

Hello all. Early this morning at about 4:45 I was looking through someone's 14.5 Starmaster at M42 and a satellite or something came right through M42. I told my friends about it and they were looking but they couldn't see it with there eyes. I wanted to try to let my friend take a look but I don't think there was anyway I could have kept track of it and us swapped places at the same time. It was going to fast. It came from NE and was headed SE. I was in north Louisiana when I saw it. If there is any way someone could help me figure out what this was I would really appreciate it. Thank you much for reading.

Nate

I've had satellites cross my field of view on numerous occasions. Perhaps that is what it was! or Aliens! 8O

Nathan: Since you asked: I ran my Starry Night Pro 4.5 program for Shreveport, Louisiana, and found that at 4:41:26 a.m. on August 13, 2005 the satellite "Iridium 43" scooted right through M42, but it was moving from Southeast to Northeast (maybe you were observing through a diagonal and got the directions reversed). Another satellite, "Aureole 1 R/B" took the same route through M42 about a half hour earlier, at 4:13:12 a.m.

Hi Nathan,
If you'd like to try to find out for yourself, just go to this site:

http://scisites.msfc.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html

It is s satellite and space station tracking site through NASA.

Keep looking up!