NUFORC Sighting 41077

Occurred: 2004-12-11 21:50 Local
Reported: 2004-12-12 10:25 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute
No of observers: 1

Location: Fort Worth, TX, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

Three lights in form of triangle in sky west of Fort Worth disappeared completely. Two were brilliant white & one orange.

As I was driving west-bound at approximately 9:50pm, December 11, 2004, I noticed two bright lights next to each other straight ahead that were increasingly getting brighter. A third light was directly between and a little above to two brighter lights. The three lights were in a formation of an acute triangle from my perspective. At first I thought it must be a very large aircraft approaching in my direction. However, upon further observation, there was absolutely no movement among the three lights. The two brightest lights were brighter in magnitude than any star in the sky. They were exactly side-by-side of each other. The magnitudes of those two lights were even brighter than the star Sirius (which was in the sky that night to the east) and about as bright as Venus sometimes appears. The two brightest lights had an equal magnitude. Those two lights slowly faded to nothing over a span of about 5 to 10 seconds, again with no movement. The dimmer third light, which had an orange tint, remained for a few seconds then faded to nothing as well. The lights never reappeared. The sky was clear and only slightly hazy to the north, but stars were still visible above and around the area in which the lights appeared. I saw no clouds in the area at the time, although I had observed a few thin clouds in the sky to the east about an hour earlier that evening.

I observed the sky for several minutes after the lights disappeared and never saw a reemergence of the lights. My located was south of Fort Worth, TX and north of Crowley, TX while observing the lights to the west. I could not tell how far away the lights were due to the lack of movement.

I have never seen a sight of this nature. When referencing the lights against the stars in the background, there was absolute zero movement among them. Two of the lights were too bright to be stars; yet they had the stillness of stars. Any aircraft would show evidence of movement unless they were ALL on a course DIRECTLY toward me or extremely far away. However, the lights faded off with no movement, either in reference to the background stars, or each other. I cannot explain or understand what they could have been. The lights completely disappeared; a sharp contrast to the bright magnitude they had, especially the two brightest lights, just seconds before they faded to nothing without movement.

Many times in the past, I have observed aircraft lights which seem to get brighter in magnitude as they approach in a path directly towards my location, only to dim as their paths change. But their movements are always apparent in such cases and the lights never disappear. Although I was driving at the time, the lights were directly ahead of me and I had slowed down to nearly a stop observing them because I could not get my eyes off of them. While waiting for the lights to reappear I took note of the surrounding stars and, from my perspective, they were located in or below the region of the constellation Pegasus. My vision was very clear in this case since I was wearing my corrective lenses at the time, which gives me a vision of 20/20. The dimmer, background stars of the lower portion of the Pegasus constellation remained quite clear.

Posted 2004-12-14