NUFORC Sighting 148851

Occurred: 2019-09-14 16:00 Local
Reported: 2019-09-15 12:32 Pacific
Duration: 15 minutes
No of observers: 5

Location: Carpinteria, CA, USA

Shape: Diamond
Characteristics: Lights on object, Changed Color, Aircraft nearby

Thin, rotating,box-like metallic structure with brilliant 'headlamp-like' red/pink/white lights grouped together, perhaps 4 of them.

There were 5 of us sitting in the backyard. Clear, sunny, hot day. I noticed an object over head with bright lights or sunlight glinting from it. We thought it was a small plane flying high, perhaps 10-20k feet, but hard to tell. It remained somewhat stationary, so this drew our attention, along with the lights. Then it began to move (or had been moving, but slowly) again. We got binoculars and I got a reasonably good view of it. Though shaky, I saw what appeared to be a square, metallic structure, with 4 “headlight” type lamps, very bright, and concentric with each other so they took up all the area of the square structure. They were white and red/pinkish, with a brilliance unlike anything I’ve seen. They were changing color, blinking. (You could see the lights and colors with the naked eye. They were not at all like any plane.) Looking through the binoculars, the object appeared to be rotating because the lights would disappear in what seemed like a profile view, then I could see all 4 (or more) of them again, coming back into view.

I kept remarking to the others that we were looking at a ufo!, half joking, but the more I looked, the more the only possibility of what it was—a drone—seemed out of the question. It was too high, there were no “propellers” or visible means of propulsion, and it was rotating.

A passenger jet from LAX flew by and below the object. I could see the jet details clearly, and the object appeared to be higher than the jet.

By the time I finished using the binoculars it had gone out of view, so the others couldn’t get the close view I had.

Posted 2019-09-19