NUFORC Sighting 22086

Occurred: 2002-03-01 06:15 Local
Reported: 2002-03-03 12:27 Pacific
Duration: 3 Minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Naples, FL, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object

Black Triangle, clearly seen slowly moving over Alligator Alley March 1st 6:15AM

I was traveling south on Interstate 75, 11 miles south of Naples, Florida on Friday morning, March 1, 2002. I was listening to AM 610 WIOD and preparing to pull over, to watch the space shuttle launce at 6:22 am, on it's mission to upgrade the Hubble telescope. The sky was quite overcast, and the sun was just beginning to light up the clouds, although it had not yet risen. I noticed an object in the sky to my front left. It had 3 tiny white lights. As it came closer, at a very slow pace, I was able to make out the shape very distinctly as a triangle. It was flying low, well below the clouds, and the afore mentioned lights were at each apex. It was totally black, and the lights did not illuminate any portion of the craft. When I realized what I was looking at, I pulled over to the side of the road, and shut off the engine to listen as it passed. It was traveling west-northwest and passed by over a period of approx 3 minutes. I was sitting in the van I was driving with the window down, engine off, and I could not hear any sound at all. The traffic in that area was very light, and I actually cannot remember if another vehicle passed by me during this time or not. I turned the ignition to aux to have the radio come back on, to know when the shuttle was launching, and looked back and the object was simply gone. I got out of the van, and looked around the sky, but there was nothing. There were no contrails in the sky as well. I might note also that I travel this area twice a week, and very rarely see any conventional aircraft at all.

The shuttle launch was not visible due to the clouds. As a side note, before I left on this trip, I set the digital clock on the radio to sync with my local radio station from Tampa (970 WFLA) and after this event, the van clock was two minutes slow. The reason I set the clock, was the van had had a starter replaced the previous day, and the clock was hours off. When I got back to the Tampa listening area Tuesday evening, the clock was still 2 minutes slow.

Posted 2002-03-19

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