NUFORC Sighting 82858

Occurred: 2011-07-27 21:00 Local
Reported: 2011-07-31 20:40 Pacific
Duration: 20-30 minutes
No of observers: 4

Location: Hilton Head Island, SC, USA

Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Lights on object

3 bright orange lights in triangular formation hovering in sky along coast.

My family and I were staying at the Mariott Resort and Spa last week. It was a partly cloudy night but stars were still visible. It was very windy too. It was almost dark when we were eating dinner outside and at about 9 PM we all (4 adults) noticed three faint orange lights in the sky in a triangular shape. We all thought they were planets or satellites at first because they stood out among the stars and did not flicker. They continued to grow bigger and brighter and the orange color became much more clear. At first they appeared to be stationary (on a very windy night) but then appeared to be moving very slowly along the coast. They stayed in perfect formation but dimmed and grew brighter and dimmed again. At one point, they looked like bright orange spheres in the sky and appeared far bigger than any stars that were visible. They were not flashing lights and there were no other colors visible- just orange. There was no sound from whatever this was. I walk ed up to my room about 30 minutes later when the lights looked like glowing basketballs in the sky and took my husband (who had returned to the room before me) to the balcony to see how bright they had gotten and they were gone. The whole incident lasted about 30 minutes.

I asked some of the hotel staff about what we saw the following morning and they all looked at me like I was nuts. I can't find anything on the Internet about others seeing these lights and am very curious to find out what they were. So mad I didn't take a picture. I thought about it later when I actually considered the possibility of being a UFO (never given this topic much thought). I did find several pictures on the Internet that look like what we saw though.

NUFORC Note:

This report originally was posted for the State of Ohio, but Hilton Head Island is in South Carolina. The source of the report erred, and entered her state of residence, Ohio, and the location of the sighting, but we believe she intended to indicate South Carolina. The report was corrected and re-posted on October 11, 2017. PD

Posted 2011-08-07