NUFORC Sighting 13777

Occurred: 2000-08-13 02:15 Local
Reported: 2000-08-13 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 4

Location: Dana Point, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

Blue light in sky performing amazing manuevers for five minutes

(I apolagize for any mistakes and overall poor quality found in this write-up..I am exhausted and write this a few hours after my encounter) After a night of bowling, my three friends and I decided to go and watch the meteor shower of 8/13/00. we spread out the sleeping bag for us to sit on and saw a good 5 or six shooting stars in the course of a half hour or so. at about 2:15 or 2:20 or so i spotted what had the appearance of a faint, small, bluish star. It was moving straight across the sky very slowly. Slow from our perspective, but probably traveling extremely fast, just far away. My friends instantly saw this as well. We decided it was a satellite and continued to watch it when suddenly, it changed course and headed downward, completely about face from the course it was heading. At this point about ten seconds had passed. then it began to move horizontally in a jerky start-stop motion. coming to complete stops with no gradual slow downs. next it began to make jerky half circle motions, clockwise then counterclockwise visa-versa etc as it travelled on its path. it made occasional complete circles. it continued these unpredictable course changes periodically and continued its bizzare loops and dashes. untill it appeared to become almost stationary far on the opposite side of the sky from where it had started. nearly five minutes had passed...that is an agreed upon esitmate. we watched for about ten more minutes or so...occasionally it moved...we were more or less freaking out trying to rationalize what we had just seen and at the same time trying to calm down one of my friends who was already 10 minutes late for her curfew. the two girls I was with were basically hysterical as they fed off eachother's fear. i really wanted to stay and watch in case something else happened but my friend had to be home for her curfew( it was now about 2:40 am) and she was the one driving us around so i had to go. I was dropped of at my car where i raced to my home 20 minutes away and woke up my parents to come look for what i had seen. They were not amused. I watched the sky from my backyard for about another hour and gave up. this was no airplane or meteo! rite. it was a faint, blue dot in the sky doing the most amazing maneuvers i have ever seen. once again i emphasize how it changed course directions instantly and jumped about in the sky. what would do this i ask? i have never been a believer nor skeptic towards UFOS. I am convinced someone else out there besides my friends and I saw this, for it couldnt have happened on a more observed night than a meteor shower like this one. I wish I wish i could give points of reference like constellations, stars and directional coordiantes..but im totally clueless when it comes to those types of things. I was referred to this site from somebody in a UFO chatroom on aol where i went looking for other people who may have seen this. And yes we were all entirely sober.

Posted 2000-08-19