Tonight is september 1, 2010. I was sitting on my back porch looking at the planes flying over and watching for satilites as I often do. At around 9:10 I saw something strange in the sky. An object that looked like a star seemed to blase very bright for a short period of time then fade out. It was not moving like a shooting star or a satilite. It stayed on one spot. It was about as bright as Mars. The whole event lasted about 2 or three minutes. It appeared to be directly below the north star from the constilation camelopardalis.

This was not the first time I saw something like this and I have no idea what could cause this. It looked like a star going nova or something. Can anyone tell me what it is?

• on and off stars - meadsb - September 18, 2010 - 14:51 UTC