NUFORC Sighting 70695

Occurred: 2009-06-24 22:30 Local
Reported: 2009-06-24 20:15 Pacific
Duration: 20 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Morrisville, NY, USA

Shape: Cigar
Characteristics: Lights on object

Large bright light in the sky and when it turned it appeared to be cigar shaped with a red light on its front

The sighting occurred around the time of 11:00 PM, it was a clear night and I had decided to lay in my yard and view the sky. The sky was dark and dotted with stars, planes slowly moved across the sky.

I continued to watch the sky for a good thirty minutes or so until I saw something out of the ordinary in the sky. What I saw was a sudden bright light; at first I thought it was just a bright star but the more I looked I realized it wasn’t a star at all. The light was not a fiery white blaze a meteor would normally generate, it instead looked as though something was shining a huge bright spotlight in the sky towards my directing. The flying object was not bearing any strobe light or light a plane would normally carry and not giving off any loud chopping noise a helicopter would generate and was not giving off a roar a jet would normally create. The light it was giving was too bright and massive to be any airliner as well.

As I strained my eyes to make out the light on the aircraft it suddenly turned to the left so I could get an almost clear view of its side. With the light no longer focused in my direction I strained to view what appeared to be a long cylinder-like object with a red light on what I assumed was its front. Soon the red light dimmed to such an extent that it was impossible to decipher where it exactly was in the sky.

I quickly ran back into my house grabbed my telescope and brought back outside where I set it up positioned it towards where I last saw the object in a desperate attempt to try to find it again, but to no avail, it was gone.

NUFORC Note:

The report is somewhat reminiscent of a sighting of the bright "flare" from an Iridium satellite. However, Iridium flares do not have a red light, to the best of our knowledge. PD

Posted 2009-08-05