From John Palencia:

Re: Blast called furthest object visible to naked eye (March 20): i was outside my home in the city and looking west south west, at about 40 degrees i think i saw this.

it was about 15 minutes after midnight on wed. 3/19/8 i noticed a bright unuasual light with bright colors, red, blue and glimmering white. i do not think i saw the actual burst, but i saw the bright colors for the following nights. i have a basic telescope and i tell my wife “it only makes the white dots look like more dots”. (not so good telescope), but that night i was in amazement in what i saw.

i googled “night sky” that night but have not found anything till i heard on the news over the weekend that there was an exploding star visible that night wed. i sat outside at midnight on thurs and friday watching this object. it was a wonderfull. as i tried to focus on the object, i would turn the nob all the way one way and all the way back the other way, i do not know if it was my eyes or the actual object, but what i saw was, well, when you unfocus it makes the object you see blurry then it as it gets close to focus the light object forms a shape, , well the shape at one certain place formed a circle, round and as i continued to to turn the focus knob i saw the round object somewhat glow and darken at the same time and i saw swirls of liquid type “plasma” moving around, it reminded me of a movie, maybe star trek or some thing with a “plasma” ball. do you know what i am trying to describe? a swirling liquid type ball like a 60’s oil light show.

make any sense? i cont. to turn the knob back and forth and found the telescope did the same thing. it just did not happend once.

after messing with the focus, i focused on it and, the colors were so “shimmery” blue like a blow torch, red like fancy christmas wrapping and white like light reflecting off ice.

well, i have always been amazed by the night sky and am looking forward to hearing from you.

i live in san antonio texas, where i saw this at home at zip code 78213.