NUFORC Sighting 122261

Occurred: 2015-09-24 22:15 Local
Reported: 2015-09-25 09:52 Pacific
Duration: 30 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: East Mesa, AZ, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Landed

A bright flashing white light was seen floating high up overhead in the Southern sky that seemed to fall to the ground in 30 min.

On Thursday night, 9/24, in the E. Mesa, AZ, area I was outside with my telescope viewing the moon and Saturn in the southern sky. At about 22:15, I noticed a bright flashing light up in the southern sky in the area just east of Saturn. There are lots of planes flying high overhead all the time but the bigger ones generally have 2 or sometimes 3 bright lights while smaller planes tend to have a white and red flashing light and helicopters sometimes have 3 or 4 lights of different colors but they all to go across the sky and disappear in a few minutes. However, this flashing light was just one light and it was staying near the same place in the sky, which seemed odd.

After I noticed that it wasn’t moving out of sight I started to watch more closely and it seemed to be just floating on the wind, darting to the left and right and sometimes zooming up and down a little or going in small circles. After I decided that it probably wasn’t a helicopter hovering up there I moved the telescope over to see if I could get a better look. It was hard to keep in sight with all the small movements and at first all I could see was the light. I thought it might be a drone being flown at night and the movements looked a bit like a drone trying to hover and stay in place in the wind. There are drone flyers around that have lots of lights on the craft to fly at night and you can actually buy bright white light to put on them but I’ve not seen one hover this long so far up in the sky.

After a few more minutes I noticed that it was getting closer and I could see it better. When the light flashed it would light up something dangling down underneath on what looked like some ropes. I kept watching as it got closer and I began to see some kind of what looked like debris tangled up in the ropes but it was swaying back and forth and being jerked around so rapidly that I couldn’t tell what it was.

I suppose the light could have been on a parachute or balloon but I don’t know what was holding it up since I couldn’t see anything above the light or anything blocking out the stars but there weren’t many stars visible in that area. It looked like it was actually coming towards me and as it got closer it also started to loose altitude and after about 30 minutes it got so low that is went out of sight behind the houses South of me and must have crashed to the ground somewhere near Rt. 60 and Signal Butte Rd. in E. Mesa.

Posted 2015-09-25