NUFORC Sighting 54551

Occurred: 2006-12-28 17:51 Local
Reported: 2007-01-07 02:19 Pacific
Duration: 6 minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Bakersfield, CA, USA

Shape: Sphere
Characteristics: Emitted other objects

Bright round orange object observed above above northern horizon.

Large circular orange colored object observed about 45 degrees above almost due north horizon (a few degrees west of north). Location observed from was Bakersfield, California location Longitude -118.974; latitude 35.389.

Time of observation was about 3 minutes before and 3 minutes after the time I took two pictures of the object at about 5:51pm on Thursday, December 28, 2006.

The pictures are not worth any detail other than to document the time the object was being viewed. There were two other viewers at my location that confirmed the object(s).

Size of object increased in magnitude from about that of a bright Venus to about twice that of a bright Venus in a period of about 5 minutes.

I don't know how long the object was in the sky before I first observed it but a few minutes after first observing it - two smaller orange objects fell away from the larger object appearing to fall straight down and away to the north from the larger object of which they fainted out disappearing at which time the larger object started to faint away also and completely disappeared also.

Note that the larger object appeared mainly stationary with a very small drift downwards - so it must have been coming straight towards our location.

I assume the object to be the debris of some man made space object such as a satellite falling back to earth.

Posted 2007-02-01