NUFORC Sighting 02196

Occurred: 1996-05-31 03:00 Local
Reported: 1997-05-09 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Chinquipin (Matagorda county, 10 miles southeast of se, TX, USA

Shape: Orb

Summary : A single point of light resembling a satallitebut moving very fast and making instant sharp turnsunlike any known object can.

Me and my brother were sitting on the dock at our bay house fishing. My brothers attention was drawn away bywhat he believed to be a shooting star.He pointed at it but i was unable to locate it due to partial cloud cover, and its dimmness. He lost sight of it in the clouds, but regained sightof it comming out from the other side of the cloud. At that point he noted that the object made a course change of about 20 degrees and continuedout of sight over the horizon. The object followed an almost perfect north to south course untill the change which was slightly more to the east.I was unable to see this object as it was moving so fast it was gone in less than 10 seconds. There was no 'tail' on the object, nor was theremore than one single point of light. its dimmness was equivilent to that of a satellite reflecting the sun in the evening and reflecting the suns light.After he settled down, and finished explaining his idea about it being a UFO, we went back to fishing, both of us now watching the sky. Less than5 minutes later, the object reappeared, again from the north. this time I was the one who spotted it first and pointed it out to my brother. He confirmedthat it was the same object he viewed previously. With both of us watching, the object started a series of right angle turns that seemed to defy the laws of physics.It made about 6 or 7 course changes overhead and continued towards the south like origionally, and disappeared behind our bay house. It AGAIN reappeared out fromthe side of the bay house low on the horizon to the south over the gulf of mexico. at this point it was moving horizonally and was moving extremely fast the entire way.By extremely fast I mean like a shooting star moves fast. We both watched it move horizontally about 30-40 degrees across the horizon, then it turned again, in a very sharpzero curve turn to a northerly direction. It proceeded across the sky making one final course change of about 10-20 degrees comming to an almost perfect north direction andproceeded out of sight into the clouds along the north horizon.I need to note here that it is uncanny how familiar it is to the looks of a satellite in orbit. We both had the perception that the object was VERY far away. With the exceptionof a few low clouds, it was VERY dark and MANY stars were visible. I think city lights (like from Houston 60 miles away) would easily have drowned out the light.its my personal view that the object was not in our atmosphere.Also, i emphasize that every single turn it made had no 'curves' in them. If you drew a right angle, thats the path it was following.I would have been more skepticle of what we saw, but increadibly, there was a report the following monday (we saw it on the first saturday morning following memorial day)in the Houston Chronicle (June 2nd i believe) reporting that there were 16 reported sightings of a UFO from Galveston Island. This island is approx. 80-100 miles WNW of ourlocation.

Posted 2002-01-29