NUFORC Sighting 129131

Occurred: 2016-08-08 17:30 Local
Reported: 2016-08-09 19:15 Pacific
Duration: >1 hour
No of observers: 1

Location: Nampa, ID, USA

Shape: Circle
Characteristics: Lights on object

Rotating circular object with antennae

On August 8th, around 17:30MT, I glanced up towards the tops of our popular trees and noticed, what I thought to be a small white ball of spider web hanging from the trees, suspended by the strong breeze, until I realized it was not moving, as it should have been, since the trees were. I could not determine what it was I was looking at-it was simply a very small white dot against the bright blue, sunlit sky.

I brought out binoculars and thru them could tell that this mystery dot was an object much farther away than the tops of the trees. But even through binoculars it was still just an odd white circle. I then brought out my 8-inch telescope and for the first time in my life a “mystery object” stayed exactly where it was while I sighted in on it instead of disappearing to let me ponder what I’d seen. When I popped in my 40mm eyepiece, I was shocked at the view. It was like nothing I’d seen before. The object looked like the protective grille of a fan, with highly reflective, or independently lit spines, radiating outward in an arc. Inside the fan grille shape was what looked like a bowl tipped sideways. Protruding from where one end of the bowl met the grille, there appeared to be antennae of some sort. As I watched I became aware that this object was slowly rotating, placing the antennae away from me so I could not see it, and then bringing it back into my view. As it rotated, it also presented me a view that brightly reflected an “S” shape within the grille. It also started to slowly move across my field of view in the eyepiece but I was easily able to follow it.

I called my aunt in Boise, who lives near the foothills on the northeast side of town, and asked her to try to spot this thing, and she was able to immediately, but there were a few thin clouds over her area, clouds that were extremely low on the horizon for me as I faced northeast, watching this object continue to rotate and pick up a small amount of forward speed. It was still visible, though growing smaller and appeared to slow its rotation when I quit watching… Thankfully I’d snapped several fairly detailed pictures with my cell phone and then with a digital camera, by holding both, individually, up to the eyepiece of my telescope. I even took a few video clips that are of decent quality.

I was so excited to see this object that as soon as I had sighted in on it and realized it was not something common, I called your hotline and made a brief report while the sighting was occurring.

Last night, my aunt and I tried to identify what we might have seen, trying to debunk our own sighting, but we could not. The closest thing we could compare this odd object to was a Loon Balloon, but both of us agree that was not what we had seen. Our object was stationary for quite a long time overhead when I first noticed it, but rotating very slowly and the appendage that appeared to be antennae was solidly affixed so that it was able to be suspended horizontally as the rotation continued, and did not hang from below. When it began to move it was following a fixed path in the sky, It appeared to be controlled in some intelligent way, until it reached an area northeast of Boise then it began to shift more to the north.

What is also of extreme interest is that the pictures my aunt took with her phone depict more than one object-or this same object was able to change its shape-not something I had been aware of but I had taken my eyes off it several times... But I will let her share that part of the story within her own report.

Posted 2016-08-16