NUFORC Sighting 77102

Occurred: 2010-08-07 21:35 Local
Reported: 2010-08-10 11:42 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute
No of observers: 2

Location: St. Clair Shores, MI, USA

Shape: Unknown

Orange-yellow light at high altitude in Detroit area. Apprx. one minute to traverse the sky.

On Saturday evening 8/7/2010 at 2135 hours, my friend and were seated on an outdoor patio in the Detroit area and witnessed an object of indeterminate shape rising from the SW or SSW treeline. The object was a very bright orange-yellow and I at first thought it might have been an aircraft with its landing lights on. Its magnitude was far brighter than Sirius. It is difficult to gauge the size of the object but I would estimate it as subtending half the angle as does a light plane at very high altitude. From our vantage point, looking in a NNW direction, the object was at about 45 degrees from the horizon. We heard no sound, saw no trail and watched it trace an arc for about one minute before it dipped below the trees in the NE or NNE. It appeared to have maintained the same level of brightness throughout its trajectory, ruling out any "landing lights". At the time I speculated that it could have been a space vehicle during re-entry. The object seemed far to! o bright to have been reflecting sunlight and the time was 50 minutes past sunset.

I called Selfridge ANG base and spoke with a colonel in the Air Museum but he could provide no information; they had no reports of a sighting. I checked the Space Shuttle schedule and ruled out that possibility. I then contacted our local TV stations and had the same result. I spoke with our TV weatherman, who seemed very interested but he also had no reports of any such phenomenon. He checked on the wind direction for the time of the object's transit but the high altitude winds were in a direction almost opposite that which would account for a weather balloon as an explanation.

Posted 2010-08-24