NUFORC Sighting 35761

Occurred: 2004-03-20 20:00 Local
Reported: 2004-03-22 09:54 Pacific
Duration: 2 hours
No of observers: 2

Location: Live Oak, CA, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Changed Colo

Hovered with bright lights over the house for 2 hours.

I pulled the car into the driveway after picking my 13 year-old son up from a friends house (It was about 8:00pm). As we got out of the car my son pointed up and to the west of the house and said "What in the heck is that"? I looked up and quickly said "It's a Star of course". My son then said "That's the brightest star I've ever seen"! I then took another look and my son was right. This object was far brighter than any other stars in the sky. It was a clear night. We watched this object for a minute and I could see individual lights on it that slowly rotated as the object would sway from side-to-side and move up and down in a gliding motion. I tried to tell myself it was an airplane, but many airplane passed by in the night sky and this objedt was far larger and brighter than any plane. The 4 or 5 lights on the object were white in color sometimes showing a redish light. It hovered around in one place in the sky slowly moving downward fro qbout 2 hours before I lost sight of it as is seemed to travel off into the distance towards the town of Colusa maybe. My son got scared and went in the house after watching for about 5 minutes. I got a little scare to when I realized that this was not a plane or a helicopter. This object was maybe 2 or three miles away (Hard to tell exactly). It was silent as it hovered. Even more strange, another object "entered" the atmosphere high above in the sky while I watch for about 2 hours. I noticed the object above moving across the sky just like a satellite (a small blue dot) but then the "satellite" suddenly grew about 10 times in size and turned a bright yellow-orange color for about one second, and then returned to a small blue dot continuing to travel across the sky. This seemed to me to be something entering the atmosphere but could have been unrelated to the larger object I was watching. I can't explain what this object was no matter how hard I try. I've never seen anything like this before. The battery on my camcorder was dead so I could not vide! otape th e object. I am a mechanical engineer and my son is a 7th grade student.

Posted 2004-03-23