NUFORC Sighting 25281

Occurred: 2002-09-19 19:45 Local
Reported: 2002-09-28 13:16 Pacific
Duration: 10 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Yosemite National Park, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Left a trail, Aircraft nearby

Slow flying very bright ball of light, surrounded by a much larger halo of light, trailed by miles of zig-zaging smoke.

On September 19th, 2002 I drove through Yosemite Park, California from west to east. It was about 7:45 pm and it was dark already. I noticed something very bright in the sky, and I thought it was a full moon. When I looked up I noticed a strange looking very bright ball of light, surrounded by a much larger ball of light, followed by a zig-zagging trail that was several miles long.

I live 5 minutes away from JFK airport in New York, and I have seen planes take off, fly, and land in all kinds of weather and lighting conditions, and I have watched many TV documentaries about missiles, the space shuttle, etc. but I have never seen anything like the "UFO" over Yosemite Park. The object slowly flew from west to east, from the Pacific towards Nevada and seemed to be in a slow ascend.

I slammed on the brakes and stopped my car in the middle of the road, grabbed my camera and began to video-tape the object. After a few seconds I stopped the video-camera and tried to take a photo with my digital camera. Unfortunately the flash was on, so the picture came out pitch black. While I tried to figure out how to shut off the flash, the light in the sky slowly disappeared. The bright ball and the huge halo slowly dimmed away. Only the long zig-zagging trail remained.

I video-taped for a little while longer and tried several more times to take a photo, to no avail. I continued to drive east towards Nevada. About 30 minutes later I noticed red and white blinking lights from 2 or 3 aircrafts that came from the east (I assume from the nearby Nellis Airforce Base in Nevada aka Area 51.) and continued to circle above the area.

NUFORC Note:

Probable report of missile launch from Vandenberg AFB. Please see other reports for this time and date. PD

Posted 2002-09-29