NUFORC Sighting 122626

Occurred: 2015-10-02 23:25 Local
Reported: 2015-10-08 06:59 Pacific
Duration: 2 minutes
No of observers: 0

Location: Cannon Beach, OR, USA

Shape: Sphere
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object

An orange sphere of intense and steady light moving steadily across a black night sky; 56 second phone video.

An Orange Sphere of intense and steady light – My wife and I were at Cannon Beach, Oregon, for the weekend.

At 11:25 PM PT, Friday, October 2nd 2015, I was looking due west over a row of beachfront motel units.

I noticed a very bright, steady, orange light out over the ocean. The moon was not in the hemisphere, and there were no noticeable clouds. The day had clear skies. Winds were calm.

When I opened the sliding door, I noticed that the light was slowly moving towards the east, towards the shore, at an even speed and steady altitude. I would guess it was above a thousand feet.

The light was not a pin-point, but a distinct round shape. I looked for a cowling shadow or surface reflection, but could see none.

The round light was intense, but not like a searchlight, there was no beam effect. There was no strobe or flutter effect, either. I was able to catch a smartphone video of 56 seconds. The video shows some strobing, but that is mostly due to the auto-focus of the phone trying to maintain focus on a light source in the dark.

At 3 seconds in I zoom to maximum, hence the greater distortion and apparent change in size.

At 31 seconds the light moves behind the row of motel units where we were staying. The jostling is me stepping out onto the patio deck to capture a few more seconds.

I could not tell how fast it was moving since there was no background reference.

From the angle shift (+30 degrees at first sighting, facing west, to +60 degrees south-southeast) and the duration, someone with trigonometric skills could roughly figure out the height and speed.

There was no sound, above the sound of the ocean waves. The engine roar sound on the video seems loud, but to my ear it was a distant rumble of surf. Helicopters make a distinctive sound at the beach, whether Coast Guard or otherwise. This was not the light of a helicopter or conventional plane. There were no other lights, no navigational lights, and no other bright lights in the sky for the next half hour.

Earlier in the day, around 5 PM PT, my wife and I had seen two drones flying near Haystack Rock. They had very small white beacon lights and moved in irregular patterns and changed altitude from time to time.

The video isn’t very good, but it is a few seconds (56 seconds) of 'interesting' light.

Posted 2015-10-09