NUFORC Sighting 19272

Occurred: 2001-08-18 23:15 Local
Reported: 2001-08-24 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 5 - 6 Minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Keizer, OR, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object

Watched 3 lights in a triangle formation travel slowly and silently west to east across the night sky.

Some time between 11:15PM and 11:30PM Saturday night, August 18th, my sister noticed that a few of the stars overhead were moving. We had been relaxing on the backyard deck, watching shooting stars along with my wife, father and father in law. I couldn't think of any reason any of the "non-shooting" stars would be moving and asked her to point them out. She did and said she was a little bit "freaked out." There were 3 lights about the same apparent size and brightness as an average star. They were moving in a triangle from west to east and seemed very high in the sky. None of the lights were pointing in the direction of travel ; they seemed to be moving with what would be the bottom of a right triangle at the front. They were traveling slightly slower than a satellite. A satellite would be the closest thing I could think of to describe this phenomenon but I've never heard of satellites traveling in formation (perhaps they do?). In retrospect I don't know if it was one object or three, it didn't strike me as a single object at the time. Had we not been looking directly at the stars for some time we would definitely not have noticed them. They were silent and if they had stopped, would have been blended in completely with the night sky. Very unspectacular compared to the shooting stars we'd seen all night but very unnerving. You had to watch them for a few moments to fully realize what you were seeing. We watched them travel across the sky for 5 or 6 minutes and they disappeared behind the tree line.



NUFORC Note:

Several similar reports for the evening on this date. We suspect the objects may be the three satellites that have been reported to NUFORC on many occasions, and which we believe are part of the U. S. Navy N.O.S.S. satellite system. PD


Posted 2002-09-06

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