NUFORC Sighting 91909

Occurred: 2012-08-17 21:34 Local
Reported: 2012-08-18 10:54 Pacific
Duration: 30 seconds
No of observers: 9

Location: Aliso Viejo, CA, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Changed Color, Aircraft nearby

Fireball approaching earth, changing direction and disappearing into the clouds.

One of our children in the neighborhood came running up to my neighbor saying, “Oh my God daddy that thing is going to crash”. Both myself and the neighbor heard the other children yelling as well. I looked up and saw a plane and pointed it out to the boy. He said “not that” and then he pointed in another direction, “THAT”. When we looked in the other direction (Our location - 33 degrees 34’ 1’’ N, 117 degrees 44’2’’ W Looking 264 degrees West – approximately 10-15 thousand feet) there was a fire ball that was approaching earth moving what I would say to be about 200 – 300 mph.…difficult to tell. It was not coming straight down it was going from right to left glowing yellow and white. It was getting closer and not further away. If a Cartesian coordinating system was held up to the sky it would going from 2,3 towards 0. See below: Figure 1 (1) ("Cartesian coordinate system," 16 August 2012 at 18:35, p. 1) The intensity of the fireball grew and then seemed to calm down followed by another rise in intensity. I asked my neighbor if he was seeing the same thing I was and he said, “ya, what is that?” he said.

After that the fire ball seemed to slow down. An air craft was approaching the same area that the fire ball appeared to be in but because of depth perception issues it may have simply been flying underneath it. The air craft was coming from the south moving towards 359 degrees N at a slow speed. After the fireball stopped, it went back into the clouds going up the “y” axis (see figure [2]) Figure 2 After this it disappeared into the cloud cover. This was captured on my I-phone, but the quality is poor when we played it back on a big screen TV. The entire episode lasted about 1 minute.

The second time was similar in nature about 5 minutes after but lasted only about 15 seconds with more witnesses as previously mentioned.

8195; References Cartesian coordinate system. (16 August 2012 at 18:35). In Cartesian coordinate system. Retrieved August 18, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_coordinate _system I phone – Model: MD276LL – for compass use. True North selected.

Posted 2012-08-19