NUFORC Sighting 11552

Occurred: 1999-11-16 19:00 Local
Reported: 2000-01-02 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 7 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Louisville, KY, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Left a trail, Emitted other objects

Very bright white light, moving at approx. mach 2 or 3, in a northerly to north easterly direction, along a perfectly straight line, approximatly parallel with the horizen and also trailing a short sparkly tail with perhaps some greenish light in it. As the light receeded, and very quickly dimmed, several individual, smaller lights became visible in the tail. These lights were spaced (in quite significant length) out along the line of trajectory, and also disappeared very quickly. I thought of the comet Shoemaker Levy as it broke up before it impacted Jupiter, when I saw the individual lights trailing out in what seemed like a great distance. I cannot understand why these individual lights were not immediately visible, when I first saw the object. They only appeared when the initial bright light had faded. There were perhaps 3 or 4 individual lights trailing behind, with perhaps the space between the last and second last light larger than the space between the second last and third last light, etc. I was in my car travelling north along Campground Road when I saw it. Earlier this Fall I saw a very similar bright light, travelling in the about the same direction, at about the same speed which at that time, I dismissed as fire works as I only saw it for perhaps one or two seconds as it passed overhead.

Posted 2000-01-07