NUFORC Sighting 63459

Occurred: 2008-05-21 13:00 Local
Reported: 2008-05-21 13:56 Pacific
Duration: five to eight minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Smyrna, TN, USA

Shape: Circle
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aircraft nearby

I saw a stationary bright round light, in the bright midday sun for a few minutes (a jet passed between us) eventually it moved on east

For whatever it may be worth, I saw this today: In Smyrna, Tennessee at about 12:45 PM central time (just after noon) while walking a three and a half year old child along a walking trail at the Smyrna Recreation Park (located on busy Sam Ridley Parkway across the street from the Smyrna Airport), the child yelled out to me, "Hey, look, the western star!" ("western star" must be a term he's picked up from tv or a story book).

I looked up into the cloudless blue sky (unusually low humidity today for this area) and directly ahead of us, up high, northwest of the sun, I saw a very bright and round object that appeared to be much larger than a star and smaller than a full moon. It appeared to be white or silver or to be illuminating very bright light from within (very bright, not the way any secret object would appear).

We stopped, I took off my sunglasses and shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand. (The object was sitting stationary for the first four to five minutes we watched) At that time a jet with an exhaust trail crossed between us and the object. The object for a moment disappeared on the other side of the jet's trail of smoky exhaust. After the exhaust trail drifted away, we saw that the round and bright stationary object was still there and remained still.

We sat down on the trail at that point to watch closely, to take in every detail. I looked around at the many people playing at the park just ahead of us up the trail to see if they were looking at it, but none were. I stopped a joger who passed us at that time. He didn't even look up, but dismissivly said planes can look all kinds of ways in the sky, and kept on jogging.

Then, (and this is about four or five minutes after the initial sighting) the object started moving toward the east. I lost sight of it as it crossed nearly directly between the the sun and us. As it got further east we once again could see it. I called someone on my cell phone in an attempt to document the sighting. The person I called lives near by and could have video tapped it, but they were not home. It continued moving eastward and growing smaller in size as it was leaving. At that time another joger past whom I stopped and asked if he wanted to see something weird in the sky. He said he did so I pointed it out to him. He did see it before it disappeared, but it was much smaller by then, but still very bright. I told him it was almost gone. He commented that he could see it and that it was weird because it was so small and far away but was still bright, he thought it was unusual. But he didn't even see the the weird stuff I saw.

It left our sight about six to eight minutes after the first view of it. I looked down at the little unusually intelligent three and half year old child who watched it with me and asked what he thought it was. He answered, "Well, maybe a big magic white bowling ball?" I do not know what it was and make no claims as to what it might have been.

This is what happened.

NUFORC Note:

Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD

Posted 2008-06-12