NUFORC Sighting 8615

Occurred: 1999-08-07 23:45 Local
Reported: 1999-08-09 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 5 mins
No of observers: 3

Location: Prescott Valley, AZ, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted other objects

Bright orange light traveling North-West.

My wife and I had just gone to bed at about 11:45 P.M. Within a few minutes my mother rushed in and knocked on our bedroom door. She said there was a large orange light outside and to come look. She had gone outside to try to find Saturn with binoculars when she saw the light. When I got outside, I saw it almost direcly overhead, slightly South of my house. It was moving slowly towards the North-West, and looked like a single, very bright orange light. I looked through the binoculars and could see that it was actually several lights. It looked like it was wedge shaped on the leading edge, with some more lights behind the wedge, perhaps a total of 10-12 lights. I only looked through the binoculars for a second or two and immediately went in to get the camcorder. Unfortunately, the recorded image was poor, and I ran out of tape after only about 30 seconds. I never got to see it again to get more detail, my last sighting was through the camera. It appeared to head off about 10-15 miles from the house, at which time lights started dropping from the object. It faded from view shortly after that. The total time it was visible was at most 5 minutes. Both my wife, and my mother said they could see some structure above the lights when they viewed it in the binoculars. They said it looked like it was some sort of fabric material, similar to a balloon. There was no basket under it, and it never made a sound or the typical glow of a hot air balloon. None of us thought it could be a hot air balloon, but maybe some other type of balloon such as a weather balloon. Altho I don't know why it would have the lights on it that we all saw or why it would have been launched so late at night.

Posted 1999-08-10