NUFORC Sighting 76808

Occurred: 2010-07-27 00:10 Local
Reported: 2010-07-27 00:16 Pacific
Duration: 2 Minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Salt Lake City, UT, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Left a trail

Orange "flaming" Triangle over Salt Lake City dissappears

I saw something very odd over Salt Lake City at 12:10am (July 27,2010) tonight while walking my dog along 11th Avenue. I just Googled: "orange triangle light glow over salt lake city tonight disappears" which led me to another site. I thought I would find others who saw this. someone suggested this site to report what I saw. If I thought it was going to disappear like that I would have taken a picture.

Well to the right of the full moon from my perspective, maybe 20 degrees, I just noticed a very strange orange flame like light that appeared to be heading North toward the Avenues (it was to the South of me). I presumed it was odd colored forward lights to a plane flying low in the Valley. It was odd from the start. It was like a triangle in the center surrounded by a flaming orange with almost a tail of the same flaming orange. I stared at it for 2 minutes expecting it to eventually make sense. But it didn’t. It didn’t move much really. Never any noise. I was expecting and listening for an engine noise that never came.

Then it started to fade. I thought it was turning away, but then it faded, still visible but smaller. Then it totally disappeared. I thought maybe it went behind a cloud. But there were no clouds in the sky in that area at all.

In total I witnessed this for about two minutes. And at arms length, it would have taken a full fingernail to cover it up.

The Orange balls of light I see here described by others in other areas sound very similar.

((ADDENDUM SUBMITTED BY WITNESS))

Possible explainations of what i saw in Salt Lake City last night

((name deleted)) in Salt Lake City 24 hours later: I’ve tried to make sense of what I saw last night and came up with two plausible theories.

The first, which I have disqualified is that I was witnessing a reentry by the Space Shuttle at a much greater distance than I originally perceived and at an angle more or less directly toward my position.

The second, is that I was watching some sort of burning balloon. I had this notion in my mind tonight and then saw some you tube videos on Chinese lanterns. If that is what I saw, it was quite large and was either on fire entirely, or was supporting an enormous flame before burning out. This does however explain the orange flame color, the lack of sound, the slow movement, and the ultimate disappearance if it were to burn itself out.

Still, I wish someone would confirm they saw what I saw last night, or someone would confess to launching the thing. Like I say, I saw it for two minutes before it disappeared. It could have been there much longer before I noticed it upon admiring the full moon.

((END ADDENDUM))

Posted 2010-07-28