Occurred: 2000-07-17 22:40 Local
Reported: 2000-07-17 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 45-60 seconds
No of observers: 4

Location: Cedar Rapids, IA, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object

Sighting of a triangular-shaped object judging by distinct lights on three corners.

Triangular object with one white light and one red light on each corner. The lights did not blink. No other lights on object. Object moving with one light forward and two corner lights in back. Could not see a fuselage or wings. Sound of some type of propulsion could be heard, but it was very muffled sounding. Did not sound like jets that go over our house often, and was not nearly as loud as the ones that would be 2000-3000 ft altitude. If it was a regular jet passenger plane, judging by what we saw, it would have been flying at about 1000 feet or lower by the relative distance between the the three points where the white/red lights were. Craft not moving very fast. My wife saw it first. Said "look at that, John". She noticed it through our trees coming toward us, NW to SE direction. I looked up, and could see it through the trees, coming toward us, and I then moved in the direction where I could get a better view. The speed of the craft was very slow, that if it was a jet aircraft, it would not be doing any faster than 50 mph, relative to the altitude it appeared to be at. (We also see the police helicopter go over our house often, and I've seen it go over or by us much quicker than this total sighting took.) We were just on our way to go for a drive with our two great nieces. They had already gotten into the car in the garage when my wife first noticed this sighting. I called to them to come see it after I first saw it. They didn't move fast (the kids), and I wanted them to see it, too. But, they still climbed out of the back seat of the car, and the car is a two door - that when they got to the driveway at least 30 or more seconds after the craft was first noticed, they could still see it before it went over the trees to our SE. I would not report this, except I can not explain this sighting as a normal aircraft because: (1) the sound was too quiet for most jets that have passed over our house, (2) the wingspan, or distance between the corners of the triangle, would have made the craft size very large even for a 747, (3) the craft took a long time to move across our viewing space, (4) the lights on the corners didn't blink, (5) I've never seen jets going in on a landing pattern for the Eastern Iowa Airport in the direction of NW to SE, though I did see a small jet go over a little N-NE to S-SW just the same day, about 6:30 PM., and (6) I have never seen a passenger jet come in to our airport at that time of night. Most of the normal traffic seems to die out after 8:00 PM. Because I can give an close time, plus or minus 5 minutes, and because I also believe that local radar would show a blip for what we saw, I think that this sighting would be easily verifiable if was a normal craft or not.

Posted 2000-07-23

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