NUFORC Sighting 44485

Occurred: 2005-06-19 12:50 Local
Reported: 2005-06-20 07:59 Pacific
Duration: about 5 min
No of observers: 1

Location: Albuquerque, NM, USA

Shape: Unknown
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Changed Colo

A brightly flashing object was seen in broad daylight. It rose suddenly, hovered, then dived and sped away.

I noticed a flashing, silvery glint off in the west as I was driving home. I thought it was a piece of trash in the air at first, but it had a very bright, metallic glint to it and it was holding altitude and moving along toward the south-southeast, dipping and climbing a little in a very odd manner. I stopped and watched it; the flashing continued in an irregular, fluttery fashion, and it continued its southerly motion at a deliberate pace that seemed very much at odds with the wind at the time, which was calm at the surface.

After perhaps two minutes of observation, the object was due south of me; it suddenly rose very rapidly to a position probably 70 degrees above the horizon and stood motionless. It continued to flash and I could see a black phase alternating between the bright ones. There was no discernable shape and the size was just sufficient to give me the impression of angularity. If you imagine a rectangular mirror of a few square feet of area, perhaps half a mile away, tumbling and twisting randomly, but hanging still in the air, that's what this thing reminded me of. It seemed to be relatively close, I would guess between a quarter and a half a mile, but probably not over a mile. As it hung in the sky, flashing, I could occasionally see hints of color and there was occasionally a sense of a sort of fuzzy distortion immediately around the light.

It continued to hold in position for approximately a minute and then it suddenly dived down at a very rapid rate and then shot off horizontally just above the southeastern horizon, traveling roughly east-southeast. It vanished behind some buildings and trees. Surface winds were light and variable, with a breeze of perhaps one or two miles per hour. Temperature was in the eighties, the time was a few minutes before one in the afternoon. The sky was perfectly clear and visibility was on the order of eighty miles or better.

The only thing I can think of that might have behaved like this would be a small piece of aluminized mylar caught in a thermal. But this object was moving a relatively high rate of speed for most of the time I was observing it; the winds present at the time cannot account for this motion. The zoom to high altitude might have been caused by a thermal, but the hover and very rapid descent to low altitude (around 100 feet) followed by a rapid translational motion is beyond anything I know that thermals are likely to do.

Posted 2005-06-20