NUFORC Sighting 136633

Occurred: 2017-10-05 23:00 Local
Reported: 2017-10-08 18:12 Pacific
Duration: 3 hours
No of observers: 2

Location: Simpsonville, SC, USA

Shape: Sphere
Characteristics: Lights on object, Changed Colo

Spherical color-changing light seen in the NE sky.

On the night of Thursday, October 5th, 2017, ~10:58-11:15pm, EDT

I was in the den, when my wife came in and said, “Look out the side window, there is something there I can’t explain!” As we looked into the NE sky at approximately 45-50 degrees from 0 degrees north, we observed a colorful sphere about the size of a small marble or a large BB at arm’s length seemingly bobbing up and down just above the tree line approximately 45 degrees from the horizon. To the naked eye, it appeared like spherical net lighting that you use on Christmas shrubs or small trees and it looked like it blinked from red to blue (or green) to yellow (or white). We also focused binoculars on it and was the same effect (changing colors spherical net lighting).

After scrambling to find my camera (a Cannon T2i with a EF-S 55-250mm lens) and took the following footage and pictures (will be sent). It was the most amazingly beautiful, non-living thing I have ever seen as it appeared to be series of images of different colored balls resembling our planets and/or other colored spheres including Earth so the view with the naked eye and even with the binoculars looked different! As I took several short clips (to make their file sizes small), I was waiting for my battery to die, which it eventually did. One weird thing are the triangular blue and red "reference points" or dots on my images slightly to the left of the pictures and footage. I also noticed that the camera would work sometimes and not others so I kept restarting it. When I was recharging the battery for the Canon, I tried my iPhone 6 which did not provide any discernible images. Later shots about ½ an hour afterwards with my battery charged just enough, I noticed it had moved much as a star would but at an angle up (towards the East up and clockwise), not straight up as most stars would rise. I knew it wasn’t Venus or Mars because as I remember it, Venus and Mars were due to rise at the same time (~5:22am) about 6 hours later that same morning. It did resemble Venus in intensity but not in color. Also, there was no noise coming from the object. When I went to bed around 2:00am it was higher in the sky but still visible.

I am currently a High School Physics teacher, posses a BA in Physics and worked on three different NASA contracts in the 1980s and 90s for 5-1/2 years: Space Station Freedom (which never materialized), COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) @ Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, and at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. Also, as part of my MS degree program, I have a Graduate Certification in Space Operations which includes Remote Sensing, Space Environment and Space Operations.

Posted 2017-10-19