NUFORC Sighting 10613

Occurred: 1999-11-16 18:30 Local
Reported: 1999-11-16 00:00 Pacific
Duration: Appox 2-4 min
No of observers: 2

Location: Sycamore, IL, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Left a trail, Changed Color, Aircraft nearby

Witness described a fireball like object with a large multi-colored head (basketball or two) with a large tail extending behind it 10 head lengths traveling West to East at what seemed to be at small craft altitude 5-10,000 feet which is a very amature approximation.

*** I am relaying this sighting from a phone call I just had with the above witnesses. They will be submitting a report as well a bit later as they are not at home right now. This is as fresh as it gets as I wrote down the descritions as they talked verbatum.*** Mother and son were driving South in the town of Sycamore Ill to Dekalb, Il to visit her daughter. They were still within the city limits and on a main road when the sighting occured. The son excitedly told his mother to look out of the window to the right and at first saw the lights of a small low flying airplane. Then she saw what the son saw and she said, "almost had a heart attack". She pulled the car over to the shoulder extreemly quickly and both exited the car to look at the object. The mother and son both saw what appeared to be a large "fireball" type object streaking across the sky from the West to the East. She described the size as that of a basketball or two in diameter with a long, solid tail coming off of the end that was 10 "heads" long. she said that the head of it was very clearly defined and circular. They both agreed that both the head and the tail were multi-colored and that the head was mostly red with white, purple, and yellow. They both watched the event for what theysaid could have been as long as 4 minutes from the time the son saw it until it dissapeared below the horison to the East. The object was moving quickly but slow enough for them to stop get out of the car and watch it traverse the sky for some time. The son was particulary adiment on the fact that the object "lit" the surounding area enough that when he looked into the car he could clearly see the dirt on the floor of the car in an otherwise dark area. The woman also agreed that the surroundings were definately illuminted by the object but oculd give no exact mesurement because she never took her eyes off of the object. The woman was particulary shaken because she grew up in a house where her brother was a meterologist and spent much of her life with her head pointed to the sky and said it looked like no meteor she had ever seen. She said, "I'm fourty years old and I have NEVER seen anything like this in my life." The last thing she mentioned was that after the event, both her and her sons eyes "felt strange" and that they "stung and felt slightly burned". She said that her eyesight was physically diffrent as they drove on and even an hour and a half after the event when I spoke to them her eyes still felt a bit strange. Finally I asked her if she could give some kind of real life example and she said the only thing she could equate it to was how the "meteor" looked in the movie Deep Impact.

Posted 1999-11-17

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