NUFORC Sighting 19552

Occurred: 2001-09-14 20:43 Local
Reported: 2001-09-15 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 30-60 seconds
No of observers: 3

Location: Saugus, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Left a trail, Changed Colo

Bright star-like light, moveing erratically and at high speed over L.A.'s San Gabriel Valley and Mountains 9/14/01

Tonight I was with two friends. We were standing on my private road in a dark section of my property, and kind-of pointing out various constellations. I live in a rural section of the mountain/desert areas north of L.A. It was a totally clear night, maybe one or two extremely small bits of cirrostratus cloud, hardly bigger than your finger on an extented arm. There was a small amount of scattered light from the urban areas to the south, but not too much. There was no moon, and the air was pleasant, about 70 degrees. I, and the others, happened to be looking over the mountains to the SE (Mt. Gleason) and there we saw what appeared to be a comet, low on the horizon. I was watching it for about 5-10 seconds, and I said to Anthony, "Is that the comet you're gonna look at when you set your scope up?" He was looking, too, and he said, "There's no comet supposed to be there this early in the year," Well, as we look at it, it gets MUCH brighter, and suddenly seems to surge toward us, passing either into or behind a small cirrostratus wisp of cloud, which lit-up interactively. It continued in a NW direction, very quick, accelerating much faster and glowing much brighter than any plane or chopper. It now appeared to be much lower and closer, maybe 20,000-40,000 feet altitude, somewhere over the San Gabriel Valley. It was approxamately 40 degrees above the horizon. Suddenly it came to an abrupt stop, and just as suddenly shot off to the north for about 2 seconds, it's sky track paralleling the horizon and covering about the width of your hand with your arm extended out front. Another sudden stop. Another abrupt course shift, back toward us, heading NW. No regular aircraft could withstand the G-force required of such instantaneous manuevers. It then shot hard to the west for another 2 seconds, stopped instantly, glowed incredibly bright, and shot straight up, fading to nothing in about 1.5 seconds. I remember saying, "It's clearly exhibiting some non-ballistic movements." It was quite evident this was a strange craft. It glowed like a bright star, with a hint of changing color around the edges. It really didn't have a shape, per se, but for a star, it did appear... thick, or fat. The star's disk was bigger than Jupiter on a good night. It also appeared to briefly leave a very faint trail, which disappeared within1/4 second from being laid down, almost making it's movements look the way pionts of light used to look as seen by old Vidicon tube video cameras with their slight, brief trails.

Posted 2001-10-12

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