NUFORC Sighting 102307

Occurred: 2013-08-13 23:45 Local
Reported: 2013-09-10 17:11 Pacific
Duration: 10 seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: Corte Madera, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Changed Colo

Light object flashes then disappears over house.

While sitting out on our back deck, looking for the perseid meteor shower, my fiance and I witnessed something very strange. I am an amateur astronomer in my mid 40's. I have been looking at meteor showers and planets through several telescopes since I was a young girl growing up in the farming hillsides of northern england with my father. My fiance also - has been an amateur astronomer growing up in Montana. We are both fairly expert at seeing meteors and know what we are looking at in the night sky on most clear evenings.

We had seen several good meteors over a period of about 30 minutes prior to the strange light sighting. We were focused on the area around Perseus and Cassiopiea in the night sky. Looking directly west from where Cassiopeia is located at this time in our section of the hemisphere, and directly above my home - we saw a sudden and brilliant light. It was not a meteor. It didn't move from one point to another, there was no tailing off or t! rail. It was almost like a camera flash. It started off looking like a regular star in the night sky and the suddenly - flashed really bright - like a camera flash going off - on a much larger scale.

We both exclaimed as we saw it. My fiance explaimed "whoa did you see that" as I pointed directly up at it to show him. It flashed in a bright purple color. The strangest thing was however that as soon as the flash ended, the object which had previously been there - like a star - disappeared. It got stranger however when just a few seconds after disappearing, it flashed again but this time like an explosion - with this time a green light - and then also disappeared completely. We watch the night sky almost every night. The skies around the San Francisco bay area are crowded with planes. I know all the flight paths having lived here in this location for 18 years. And I know the many different colors and flashing signals emitted by planes. This was not one of them - bei! ng just literally a finger length from the area we were focuse! d on for the meteors, this was a star or so it seemed. I have not really ever paid attention to UFO stuff. But after telling my father about this strange light - he directed me to look at an online video of a UFO over Jerusalem which had descended to the temple hovered, and then flashed and took off. I wasn't going to write in to report this because I didn't think this was at all a showy or really eventful sighting and I have been thinking of all of the things it could have been. A military plane perhaps, or a meteor coming coincidentally right towards us on an angle where we couldn't see the tail -- but after seeing the Jerusalem video just now - the flash that that object emitted was almost exactly like the one I saw over my house. However the light disappeared after it flashed over my house - it didn't speed up into the sky as the one in the Jerusalem video did. I am a professional with a twenty year career in business as is my fiance. We are not and have never been really people! who believe in things we cannot prove with facts and science. Yet we both were really taken aback by what we saw and - having had years of studying the night sky - we have never seen anything like that and didn't feel like the flash disappearing then reappearing and the colors it emitted - were a natural occurrence. It wasnt a meteor. It wasnt a plane. I am not sure if this was a UFO but it defies explanation in my mind as to what could have behaved like that.

Posted 2013-09-30

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