NUFORC Sighting 9751

Occurred: 1997-07-15 17:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 1999-09-15 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 30 minutes
No of observers: 15

Location: Fairfield, IA, USA

Shape: Sphere

extremely bright reflective sphere changed into eccentric cigar chape

At about 17:00 I exited the Wal*Mart store here in Fairfield and I noticed about 15 people in the parking lot staring at something in the sky toward the south. Once I walked to a position from which I could see, I looked up and witnessed what seemed to look like an extremely bright and reflective (clear sky) crystal ball hanging in the sky. It appeared to be about 5 miles to the south and about a mile in attitude. It's size was about 1/4 the size of a full moon. It stayed perfectly still for about 20 minutes, during which time the other observers became bored and left. I stayed. The object slowly began elongating and growing in size on the elongated end, somewhat like a condensed baseball bat (without the knob on the end). The object lost it's highly reflective appearance and seemed to be silvery metallic. It slowly began moving away in a southwest direction and up. It kept moving away in that direction, quite slowly, until it was too small to see. I would (probably highly inaccurately) estimate its largest size at up to 500' from end to end, 50' across on the spherical end, and 100' across and the elongated end.

Posted 1999-10-02