NUFORC Sighting 73812

Occurred: 2005-07-04 22:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2009-12-26 09:49 Pacific
Duration: 15 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Queensbury, NY, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object

Strange purple light seen in night sky moving erratically

This event happened at least three years ago on the 4th of July in an empty baseball/soccer field between 10pm and midnight. I was about 19 at the time, and the other witness with me was about 24. I distinctly remember it being the 4th of July because we had heard firecrackers and fireworks going off all night however I noted to myself that we saw no lights from the fireworks at all and only heard the noises very far off. The night was perfectly clear and the baseball field had no lights so the night sky and stars were very bright and easy to see, there was no moon that I can recall.

We were lying on our backs watching the stars, comets, satellites and planes for about an hour and during that hour a small pinprick of purple light became visible almost directly above us. It was bright enough to easily track and very obviously purple colored. At first it was the size of a star and almost unnoticeable among all the stars in the sky, however it grew slightly bigger after a few minutes (probably as large or larger as the north star on a good night, with a slight purple glow around it making it just that much larger than the stars, however not quite as bright) and flew around in a somewhat erratic manner. It only moved a matter of inches across the sky from my perspective though obviously it must have traveled much further since it was so far away- though I have no idea if it was within the atmosphere or much further out. It was traveling very fast considering we had been watching satellites go by that night and they are extremely sluggish compared to this lig! ht. The pattern of its movement were strange and all I can really remember from that night is that it seemed to zig and zag around at random the entire time we saw it, sometimes stopping to hang for a few minutes before moving again, it’s size and color/brightness waxing and waning slightly without pattern. It only moved within a small quadrant of the sky, almost like it was circling something. A reference for its speed I had in my mind at that time was that if a plane was at that height and moving across the sky at a steady speed, the purple light would be moving double that speed- not exactly zipping around but still much faster than a plane. Because we were on our backs and it was almost directly over us it looked like it must have been out among the stars, however at a different angle it might have been within the atmosphere and much closer than what we thought. After staring at it for about 15 minutes it simply flew/faded away (with a little bit of a tail like a tiny c! omet) and nothing else happened in the sky that night.

NUFORC Note:

Witness indicates that date is approximate. PD

Posted 2010-02-14