Strange as it was II

Another post with same title!! But its not part 2 of the last one, just a sequel. Another strange thing happened today. I think it was around 6 pm today (4th October 2006) when I was on the cell phone. I went to the roof in the hopes of getting better signal, and some privacy. While chatting, I noticed some kids excitedly pointing at something in the west-north-west sky. At first I thought about kites, but curiosity got the better of me and followed their gaze. There it was, about 50 degrees above horizon, a streak of something pure white. I thought it was a trick of light, coupled together by a high flying jet with unusual contrail, but a jet with so much contrail must make heck of a noise. And it was not a double parallel contrail. It was a plume. The confusing stuff was that at the head of the plume, there was something shiny, and apparenly blinking, which I thought was a strobe light of a jet. But as I said, it was silent, and the plume was rather think, without second parallel one. I had no idea what it was, but had enough sense to take a couple of shots. It was too slow to be a jet or a meteor, and too fast to be a comet. I knew then, whatever it was, it was athmospheric, at least it was inside the athmosphere. Later it came to me, it might have been some space debris. I know for a fact that Russians throw space-trash from International Space Station in their supply ship and hurl them into athmosphere where it would burn up before hitting the earth. But it was moving from east to west, and ISS has polar orbit so can't say for sure. Of course, if did not have polar orbit, it would not be seen this north. And I just did a search on ISS. ISS will pass close to Kathmandu in +2 orbit from now. It is possible that that space-junk might have passed those +2 orbit much sooner, because as it decends, its orbital time is reduced. But ISS goes from southwest to northeast not east to west.

So basically I don't know what it was. It might have been a UFO, I can't tell. Might have been another satellite that was at the end of its life. May be a rather slow meteor. Or a small asteroid that had been captured by Earth's gravity. I know about one thats been in Earth orbit for about 4 years, but it's expected to leave the orbit in next couple of years. Maybe there are other such meteors people had not yet discovered. Who knows? I know one thing for sure -- it did not have any conventional propellant. Just gravity and friction doing its work.

They say strange things happen in triplicates. I wonder whats coming up next!!!