NUFORC Sighting 17638

Occurred: 2001-05-14 04:30 Local
Reported: 2001-05-14 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 2 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Shape: Sphere
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object

Large yellow-tinged spheroid in predawn sky over Santa Barbara at 30,000 and 300mph

At 4:30am I got up before dawn to go out to my car parked on a Alta Vista Rd not far from the center of Santa Barbara. It was perfectly quiet and still outside and I scanned the sky as I always do for UFOs and I have done so the past nine years with no results until today. I was facing northeast, then looked up and just overhead and to my right I saw a lumious spheroid shape, moderately bright, white and yellowish-tinged, passing in a straight line from the Santa Barbara Channel in the southeast, to the northeast towards Bakersfield. It travelled in what seemed to be a course crossing directly over the southern end of town. At first I had to eliminate other possibilities: airplane, satellite, meteorite, space station, etc. I felt that it was too low to be in space and it was silent, so it couldn't be a plane of any kind. Also the light itself was too round and uniform in shape, and too yellowish in luminescence, from the point when it was over my right shoulder to the time I watched it disappear over the horizon of the mountains. A conventional space vehicle or satellite would show bright white and gradually either brighten or dim out as it crossed the terminator. This did neither. This thing was just too big and yellow anyway and did not change much in luminosity. It was just too big to be either a marker light or a landing light of any kind and it was not on any established airways. I estimate that it was at somewhere around 30,000 feet give or take a few thousand and the light was easily the size of an airliner. I also rule out any natural phenomena such as meteors. There was no flaming tail and no streaking. It was just not that fast either. It cruised along at a fairly brisk pace which I would estimate at a up to 300 hundred miles per hour. But it was high enough for me to watch it for at least two minutes. I noticed no fluctuations in its course, but it did seem to fluctuate in speed and altitude slightly. I am extremely careful about such things and this is my first report in nine years of sky-w! atching. I feel I have a good sense of such objects from being a private pilot and having spent four years in the Air Force. I have never seen anything like it in my life. I am about 90% sure it was not of this world, but am open to other explanations.

Posted 2001-08-05