FT262

The mystery “well-lit object” seen close to the Moon on 20 January 1980 [FT31:33, 257:80] recalled something I witnessed on the night of 17–18 July 2003. Sometime between midnight and 2am, I observed an orange orb that appeared to be close to the Moon. I determined this by the fact that the edge nearest the Moon was illum­inated by moonlight, which would have been impossible if the object had been closer or more distant in the same line of sight. Over a few minutes, it orbited from the north polar area along the right side (from my perspective) to the equatorial area.