NUFORC Sighting 72120

Occurred: 2009-09-02 22:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2009-09-06 22:28 Pacific
Duration: several minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Aurora, IL, USA

Shape: Light

Large, bright, amber, flaring light over Aurora, IL

My adult son and I were taking a late-night walk when we both noticed, almost at the same time, a strange light in the sky. I say "strange" because neither of us had ever seen anything like it before. It was significantly bigger than a typical airplane or helicopter light; it was amber orange in color; it was very bright in the cloudless sky, even with the full moon; it did not have a well-defined outline – more like a flaring ball of plasma than a solid circle; it was a steady light, with no flashing or strobing. The speed seemed to be about the speed of an airplane. When we first looked up, we were afraid because we thought a plane was on fire. But it was traveling in a deliberate, straight line, going in a SW direction, approximately 45 degrees up from the ground. We could not discern how high up it was but the size made us think it must not have been at a high altitude. We heard no noise from the object. It never veered from its course but c! ontinued on in the same direction the whole time. At some point, our vision was obscured by trees in the distance, but the object did not reappear from out of the line of distant trees. It seemed to have disappeared. We looked for it for a long time afterward but saw nothing. At the point where it had been obscured by the trees, it was still visibly large to us, so we doubt that it simply got too small to see in that short a time. The entire sighting took several minutes as it went from the NE sky (where we first spotted it) to the SW where it seemed to have disappeared after our vision was blocked by the tall, distant trees. We saw airplanes flying over the same general area both before and after we saw the amber light. Seeing them right after the amber light confirmed to us how different they were.

NUFORC Note:

Witness indicates that date is approximate. PD

Posted 2009-12-12