NUFORC Sighting 41571

Occurred: 2005-01-18 06:20 Local
Reported: 2005-01-19 20:54 Pacific
Duration: 30 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Mission Viejo, CA, USA

Shape: Sphere

Extremely bright object in the eastern sky in southern O.C. moving very slowly that suddenly lost its luminance and disappeared

I'm not sure if what I saw fits the true definition of a U.F.O. It was extremely bright, like a star or a planet. I frequently look out to the south (southeast) in the early morning to gaze at what I believe is Venus or some other planet, because it is extremely bright relative to the other stars. This object that I saw on the 18th was due east and roughly 30 degrees above the horizon It appeared to be slightly moving, although now I can't recall the exact direction. It's motion was unspectacular. It travelled neither far, nor fast and it's movement wasn't particularly perceptible. The strange thing is that it looked like a very bright star/planet, and I've never seen a star that bright in that location before, and to the best of my knowledge there shouldn't be one at that location. After staring at it for about 30 seconds it just went dim and disappeared. Now it is true that the sun was beginning to rise, but it had not come up over the horizon. Also there were plenty of other stars in various locations relative to the object in question that were still visible, and their brightness only seemed to dim gradually as I continued to look outside. They've never just went dead as if someone pulled the plug. There were stars both above and below the object/celestial body when it stopped shining. There is a huge amount of air traffic in this area as we are in a large metropolitan area that is surrounded by two gigantic metropolitan areas ( L.A. and S.D.) and a major military installation ( Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base ). This craft/thing was unidentifiable to me so I thought you might be interested.

Posted 2005-01-27