NUFORC Sighting 83004

Occurred: 2011-08-05 22:15 Local
Reported: 2011-08-07 23:44 Pacific
Duration: 5-6 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Long Beach, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aircraft nearby

Bright green light over north Long Beach CA.

On Friday August 5, 2011, at approximately 10:15pm, my girlfriend and I were walking to our car after having dinner at ((name deleted)) Restaurant in Long Beach (XXXXX) East 2nd Street, Long Beach, CA 90803-5308) As we were walking across the parking lot I noticed a bright green light moving in the sky.

I thought it was a skyrocket at first so I kept looking at it, waiting for it to explode. I was facing northeast.

My girlfriend was right behind me but was fumbling with her purse, looking either for her phone or for cigarettes. I can't remember which.

Fireworks are a common sight during the summer in Southern California, and I thought this was part of a fireworks show being put on by an amusement park or maybe even the Orange County Fair. But there was no explosion. The bright green light appeared to just hover over North Long Beach.

I should note that we were a few blocks from a south facing beach and that we were walking in an eastward direction through the parking lot. The lights we saw did not appear directly above us but rather appeared about five or maybe even ten miles northeast of our location.

The distance itself is a bit of a guess. It was a clear night but I didn't notice any type of landmark that would help to determine how close or how far the lights really were, though it's possible that they were near the Long Beach Airport, as it is in the general direction of where we saw the lights.

My girlfriend hadn’t noticed it yet so I asked her, "Hey, what is that?" I pointed to the green light that I’d been observing and she thought it was a plane, but I pointed out to her that it couldn’t be a plane or helicopter because there were no blinking lights on this object. It remained one solid color throughout the entire sighting, bright green.

As we were watching this thing we could see that the normal air traffic one sees every night was still happening. There were helicopters in the distance and we could see planes in the sky, probably making their way to Long Beach Airport or LAX.

The other thing we noticed was that the green light was the brightest light in the sky at that time.

We watched it move back and forth (east to west then back again) for a few minutes.

It’s difficult to say how fast it was moving but I would say its speed seemed similar to that of a commercial airliner moving across the horizon.

Approximately two minutes into the sighting we noticed a second bright green light appear below the first green light. This light appeared to be west of the original light we’d spotted. We didn’t notice any movement with the second light. It appeared to just be hovering in the sky.

The second light appeared in the sky for about thirty seconds and then vanished.

After the second light had vanished we noticed a third light appear below the original bright green one. This light was east of the green light and was red in color.

This third light’s movement was similar to that of a helicopter. I actually thought it was a helicopter at first but noticed that there were no blinking lights on that object either.

The light was a solid red. No blinking or anything else that one would associate with a typical helicopter flying over a large city with an airport nearby.

This red light moved faster than the first light we'd spotted. Not freakishly fast but more like a helicopter than anything else. It looked like it was moving toward the green light but then it stopped and appeared to just hover near where the green light was.

At this point my girlfriend and I noticed that the bright green light we’d originally noticed looked like it was starting to fade. It disappeared momentarily and then reappeared in the same spot we’d last seen it. As this was happening the red light began to fade and disappeared completely. This left the green light as the only light we could see hovering in the sky. It remained in the sky for another twenty seconds (approx) until it too disappeared completely.

Seconds after the lights vanished we noticed two helicopters flying (circling?) around the area where we had seen the three mystery lights.

The entire sighting lasted about five or six minutes.

Posted 2011-08-21

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