NUFORC Sighting 120549

Occurred: 2015-07-21 22:00 Local
Reported: 2015-07-21 19:50 Pacific
Duration: 1:30 seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: Holiday, FL, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Changed Colo

Giant fireball over canal in holiday, Florida

Red/orange, glowing, fireball floating quietly 200-300 ft in the sky. Flying south to north, slowly, and suddenly began flying east, fastly. It looked almost like a giant sky lantern that was burning out of control, but quickly realized it was changing direction and couldn't have been a balloon, there was no wind. My girlfriend and I thought it was a helicopter that was burning out of control, but we didn't hear rotars. We live near tampa and Clearwater airport and see a lot of air traffic, including helicopters, and are used to all types of aircraft sounds. This was flying too low and made no sound whatsoever. Even more interesting, just before we saw the fire all we both saw a very bright star in the Scorpio constellation which began to slowly ascend higher into the sky until it disappeared. I said, "do you see that?" Pointing at the bright star. She yelled, "WHAT IS THAT?!" Pointing at the fireball, which was floating quietly over the canal next to our home. We observed for a total of 1.5 minutes. There were intermittent, fog-like clouds flying by over head. But the fireball was below the fog.

I am a prior service army veteran who was stationed with 1st cavalry division's air cavalry brigade, from 2006-2008, and have much experience with helicopters. The size of the craft, if you extend your hand out and close one eye, was about the size of a quarter.

Posted 2015-07-23

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