But recently, at the beginning of autumn, while walking the dog, I met a familiar fellow dog walker. This man, who is already retired, asked me during our shared walk whether I had also noticed the bright points of light in the evening sky.
He reported that there were often two of them and that they were so bright, it was as if someone had placed a "lamp" in the night sky. Sometimes they would suddenly go "out," only to appear brightly again in a completely different location.
From this direction (looking SSW—towards the thermal baths), I could view the entire evening sky. The bright point was still there and very low, much too low for a star. Stars were clearly visible in the evening sky, but much higher and only faintly illuminated.
This point, however, was just as the man had said—as if someone had placed a "lamp" in the sky. By chance, my daughter called. She was at home, about 1 km SW of my position. I told her to look out the window for the point, and she was able to spot it immediately, so we formed, in a sense, a nearly isosceles triangle with the object as the peak.
She said that it was moving, which I could not perceive at first, but then I saw how the point "drifted" to the right and stopped abruptly. This observation was confirmed with a slight time delay by my daughter on the phone, so we both saw the same movement without influencing each other.
I brought the dog to my mother, who lives positionally speaking in the middle of the aforementioned isosceles triangle. I pulled out my binoculars, the only tool available to me, and observed the point. The light did not seem round but looked rather like a balloon.
Suddenly, a red-and-white blinking something pulled away from the point; this something was again very bright. Since many airplanes cross our night sky here, including today, I immediately convinced myself that it was one of them, but I could not turn my gaze away from the object.
During my observation, several night flyers crossed our path, and I noticed more and more that the others also blinked red and white as usual, but they could barely be seen—the object blinked so brightly that I believed I could recognize a "honeycomb pattern" in the glow of the blinking. Especially the red was very, very intense.
When the object disappeared from my line of sight, I looked back at the point. It was still there, so I wanted to aim the binoculars again, looked up, and it was gone—as if "switched off."