NUFORC Sighting 09586

Occurred: 1999-09-04 21:24 Local
Reported: 1999-09-07 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 3-4 min
No of observers: 4

Location: Richmond (just east of), IN, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object, Left a trail, Aircraft nearby

Observed fireball with small tail in slow swirling motion, then observed a series of orange lights in a perfect V formation.

Saturday night Sept.4 around 9:20 pm or so, driving north on rt. 35 coming from Eaton, OH heading to I-70 west to continue on to Indianapolis visiting family. My family and I were just coming around the curve were rt35 conects with I70w and I saw an unusual light off to my left (sw). It appeared to be a plane at first but only one yellow/white light and no other colored blinking lights. I noticed my wife in the passenger seat looking at it also. About the time I was rounding the entrance ramp omto I70w, I noticed it had formed a short tail of fire or sparks. From the direction of the tail (angled upward and to the right) it looked to be falling like a meteor, but much, much slower. My wife and I were comenting and speculating to each other about what we were seeing, this all while I was merging into busy intersate traffic. I continued to watch and look for a good spot to pull over at the same time. As I continued to observe the object it did not appear to be falling! but instead the short tail slowly changed position around the ball of light, making it look like it was now spinning very slowly. The trees along the roadside made it hard to see and we lost sight of it several times, but I finally pulled over and grabbed my video camera. As I rolled my window down and started filming, the tail was gone and it just appeared as a ball of light again. Frustrated because I was having trouble focusing on the object, I pulled the camera down and my wife and I observed the object nearing the tree line which seemed to be several miles away. Just before it reached the tree line the ball disappeared and a large triangle formation of orange lights appeared pointing torward the southwest. We only saw this formation for a few seconds then it dropped beyond our view. Setting there as the trucks rushed by discussing what we just saw, I recall seeing a second triangle fromation in front of the first pointing at the first, almost forming an x. My wi! fe states she saw a line of lights coming from the front of the V. Re gardless, the V formation was made up of nine lights, four on each side of the center one. All lights appeared to be the same intensity. We pulled of at the next exit and scanned the skys for an hour with no other sightings, other than what appeared to be a military plane circling the area.

Posted 1999-09-12

© 2023 National UFO Reporting Center. All rights reserved. Use or reproduction within any application without written consent is prohibited.