NUFORC Sighting 27274

Occurred: 2003-01-17 00:30 Local
Reported: 2003-01-24 20:04 Pacific
Duration: 7 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Isle of Palms, SC, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aircraft nearby

very bright orange light moving steadily across the sky being pursued by an airplane

We live a few blocks from the beach on a barrier island outside of Charleston. Around midnight, several nights a week, I spend an hour or so on our third floor deck listening to the ocean, looking for shooting stars and satelites (wondering about UFO's). This night I saw a very bright (brighter than the bightest star/planet) orange light in the sky moving from the shore, inland WNW. It appeared lower than a plane when it is on approach and holding. Behind it was a jet. We live near an Air Force base and often see airplanes traveling in tandem, so I assumed it was a pair of Air Force jets although an object moving across the sky with nothing visible but a bright orange light, looked quite peculiar. Less than a minute passed when I realized I was observing a jet in pursuit of the orange light. The two traveled back and forth and up and down, with the plane clearly following whatever the orange light was doing. It really looked like a rather slow chase. They were both moving at about the same speed of an airplane on appraoch as well. After about six minutes, the plane followed the orange light SE and out of my view.

On 23 January at the same time of night, my boyfriend and I saw the same orange light in the sky moving inland from the ocean. It was a cloudy night and it disappeared behind some clouds in under two minutes. There were no airplanes in pursuit.

Posted 2003-03-04