NUFORC Sighting 32213

Occurred: 2003-10-12 18:25 Local
Reported: 2003-10-14 13:16 Pacific
Duration: 8 minutes
No of observers: 4

Location: Rosamond, CA, USA

Shape: Other

Two Brilliant Star objects in twilight sky

Rosamond, California October 12, 2003 - Sunday 18:25 P.M., My son-in-law and I just finished loading a few items into his pickup truck. As we stood there talking in front of my house,for some unexplained reason I looked up into the sky and as I did, there in the southern sky about 60 degrees off the horizon, were 2 very large brilliant stars situated side by side. I got my son-in-laws attention immediately,and asked him if he knew what these 2 stars where. My son-in-law who is a school teacher could not identify them either.It was a twilight sky, and too early for any stars to appear yet. We stood there puzzled not being able to determine what or why these stars were so visible when there were no ohter stars visible yet. One of the stars was more like golden yellow orange color and the other was a brilliant white star. After what seemed less than a minute,I thought the white star accually moved downward from the other star. I asked my son-in-law if he thought the white star had moved and he confirmed that it did. A second or two later the white star began a more progressive movement downward from the other star. I then realized that this was no star and I ran into the house to retrieve my binoculars making my way out to the backyard patio. As I focused in on the descending star, I could see that it was a brilliant object some great distance away. It was now in a constant slow decent. I then rushed back into the house to grab my video camera. By the this time my son-in-law, daughter and wife were outside and they too had sight of this object moving down. As I returned back into the backyard with my camcorder the object was now very low in the horizon and dropping very fast. I could not locate the object in the viewfinder and lost the chance to get any video, before it became obscured by the neighborhood surrounding tree line. The sighting of this star object lasted 1 minute. As for the other orange star object,it now seemed to move further down from its original sighted position (40 degre! es of horizon)and relocated itself in the southeastern horizon.This star object had moved in the time that my son-in-law and I moved to the backyard from the front of the house. However,neither one of us accually saw it move. At this new position, the orange star object stayed in this location for several minutes. We all went into the house after this. I returned to the backyard and by now I could no longer see it,but in its last location, the planet Mars was now becoming visible. Something strange happened during our observation of this orange star and I find words difficult to explain it.

Some people may want to interpret our observation of the orange star as being the planet Mars. To them I will say this; The planet Mars does not make its appearence in the southeastern sky, here in southern California, until 18:45 PM, at which time it first appears at a low 30 degrees off the horizon. It is a faint yellow and is not easy to see at this time. It does not begin to take on a orange color until 19:40 PM, when its position is about 70 degrees off horizon.

My son-n-law and I are convinced that these were not stars,flares,meteors,aircraft, balloons or any other objects known to us. I'm a retired Air Force veteran with 24 years experience in aircraft operations. I can honestly say that I can't correlate this to anything I've ever seen. I feel that others may have witnessed this event as well. It was too obvious not to have been noticed. I checked with the 3 local newspapers for any reports the next day. Nothing unusual was reported relating to this starnge sighting. I also contacted the community affairs office at nearby Edwards Air Force Base and they had no reports or similar reports to thier office. For now I choose to classify this as a UFO sighting.

NUFORC Note:

We spoke with this witness via telephone, and we found him to be exceptionally credible. We were satisfied that he would have been able to distinguish the lights from landing lights on aircraft, a possibility he had considered. PD

Posted 2003-10-15