by Craig Scull
Today Astro-wife (Elena) and I went to the Santa Cruz area. It was coolish with thick fog/clouds above us. As we're driving up hwy 1, Elena looks up through the tinted sunroof and says "Pull-over, now!" The disk of the sun was dimmed enough by the clouds to be viewed naked eye-- and a little "spot" could be seen below the middle. We waited several minutes and the "spot" persisted.
Saturday night Astro-wife and I observed Venus and the moon at 100x with the Genesis. Our observing site was on the side of the road in an opening of shrubbery just past Grant Ranch. Ok, nothing unusual so far right?
Then Elena tells me thinks she just saw a UFO cross the moon. Upon further description it sounds a lot like a large satellite with solar panels. Just a few minutes later Elena sees another object cross the moon, but this time it is much smaller. OK my turn, I say. I sit down and 10 minutes later I see a jet black, sharply focused small silhoutte of an object pass in front of the moon. Not much later I see another one. Transit time was on the order of 3 seconds, and all of these objects were travelling in straight lines either east or possibly north-east. Looking on the Internet later that night we found that we are not the first people to see satellites transit the moon, and in fact there are software programs to predict the transit times.
http://www.regiomontanus.de/regiomontanus-dateien/links/sat_links_en.html
[scroll down to "Skymap" at bottom of page] "A special feature is its ability to predict transits of satellites in front of moon or sun..."
I've never seen a satellite transit the moon, and it's surprising that in a two hour period we saw a total of 5 cross the moon. Freaky...