Stand outside, in the middle of any given night, in Cyprus when it’s very dark and the sky at night is clear and apart from the stars you may see something interesting. A shooting star in various colours, satellites on occasions, sometimes passenger jets, other times drones, the odd military helicopter, Santa at certain times of the year and every now and then an alien spacecraft.

A what?

Well, okay, I can’t prove it and I may be wrong, but in the early hours of this morning, not twenty minutes ago, I saw something odd. It was 04:30 and pitch-black outside as I opened our back door to let the dogs out and throw some rubbish in the bin. I’ve always been an early riser, best time to do my writing, and I love looking at the stars. As the dogs and I came back in I looked up into the black sky to take in the stars and noticed a very bright white star.

“Never seen that before,” I said to the Harvey and Holly, who gave me curious looks and then ignored me.

I followed the dogs back in and picked up my new spectacles (all the better to see you with) so that I could see if this was a star or planet. I went outside, stood looking and it was shining brightly. I wondered if it was the International Space Station (ISS), but I’ve seen that many times and didn’t look at all like it. There were no passenger jets coming into nearby Larnaca airport, I even looked that up just now and the first is at 08:05 from St. Petersburg. Besides which, it wasn’t moving or making a noise so it couldn’t have been an aircraft, space station or satellite… and then it moved.

As I viewed this once immobile object, for a god few minutes, it had suddenly started to move. Slowly, deliberately and silently it traversed the dark sky. As Cyprus is so close to Syria, just across the Eastern Mediterranean Sea from us, we tend to get a lot of spy planes, satellites, drones and no doubt the odd James Bond, traversing our uncrowded skies and peeking into what’s going on over there. I’ve seen all that in our skies. But what made this a little odd is the size of the vehicle, craft, flying car or whatever it was and one other thing… it moved slowly, deliberately and changed course. Satellites and the ISS don’t tend to change course in such a manner as this was and nor does Venus, if you’re wondering. I know Venus well, we’re old friends in the early hours of the morning and this was no Venus. Space debris doesn’t change course either and nor do meteors until they hit the atmosphere, burning up and becoming spectacular shooting stars.

I’ve seen a lot in our Mediterranean skies, and this is about the third time I’ve seen something like this. Whatever it was, it was under control and on a deliberate path to who knows where.

Tom Kane © 2017
 

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