NUFORC Sighting 11110

Occurred: 1999-11-16 19:00 Local
Reported: 1999-11-22 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 30 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Hadley, MI, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Lights on object, Left a trail

I don't know if I'd call it a CRAFT, but I saw 5 or 6 extremely bright white balls of light clustered together, with red/orange/purple-blue trails arcing behind them

I was standing outside, about 7pm. Out of the corner of my eye, an extremely bright light in the sky caught my eye. I turned to look, and saw 5 or 6 very large balls of light in the sky. The moon was full and I had the porch lights on, but the balls of light were highly visible. They were as bright, if not brighter than the moon. What was remarkable, to me, was their size. They looked like baseballs, compared to the other stars in the sky. The main one was about the size of half the moon. They seemed to travel in a cluster, but not necessarily at the same rate of speed, but it may have just been my perspective. I said "oh my god!" and ran along the deck of the house to keep it in view as it went behind a tree. There was a trail arcing behind the cluster, each ball had it's own trail and they merged into one tapering trail. This trail was very colorful, starting with a green, then red, orange, then sort of purpleyblue. It was beautiful, and I've never seen anything like it before. It arched across the sky and was visible for about 30 seconds, maybe less, and then suddenly disappeared. The tail didn't linger after the balls of light went out. I called a friend who is "into" astronomy and he said it was probably a bolide. I looked up "bolide" on the Web, but none of the picures of bolides looked anything like what I saw. This was very crisp and clear, my first thought was that it looked incandescent and like someone had drawn it in the sky, like a cartoon. I watched the news to see if anyone had reported it (actually I thought it was probably part of the Leonids, even tho it was earlier in the night than the Leonids were expected) but I didn't see anything on the news, so I thought I was the only one who saw it. I told my cousin about it - she lives in Cadillac MI, and she had seen it too! She told me about your web site, where I saw the request for people who had seen this to fill out a report. It was eerie because the event was totally silent.

Posted 1999-11-23

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