NUFORC Sighting 108912

Occurred: 2014-04-18 22:00 Local
Reported: 2014-04-25 14:23 Pacific
Duration: 10 minutes
No of observers: 4

Location: Chico, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

Report of Unusual Lights seen over Chico, California.

Report of Unusual Lights Seen in Chico, CA 18 April 2014.

At approximately 2200hrs., on the evening of 18 April, 2014, my daughter and I spotted approximately 10 luminous lights traveling in an arc from the southeast moving to the West. I first noticed two bright orange-colored lights moving across the night sky as I was driving Northeast on E. 1st Avenue in the city of Chico, CA.

I immediately pointed out the lights to my 13 year-old daughter, who asked me what I thought they were. I pulled the car over at the nearest safe place, at 1035 Village Lane. We exited the car and immediately noticed that several other lights were appearing over the trees from the horizon. We were facing the Southeast.

The lights would appear over the horizon from the Southeast and travel Westward. The lights appeared in pairs as if they were in a formation. The lights had a steady, light-orange tint to them and were fairly large. It was hard to judge their size, but I'm familiar with how bright and large Venus can appear, so I would approximate their size as if 5 or more Venuses were put together into a single object. The objects would travel in a straight course, heading Westward and then disappear from the sky. No noise was emitted from the objects. We observed the lights for a total of about 10 minutes. Most of the objects appeared to have a constant speed, with one object being fairly faster than the others.

During this period of observation my daughter took a one-minute video of some of the objects with her ipod. She captured three or four of the objects as they moved through the sky. I will email the video after finishing this report.

After pulling over at 1035 Village Lane, I called my wife (our house is close to where my daughter and I were making our observations) and asked her if she saw anything in the sky. Both she and my 16 year-old son went to the front yard and saw some of the lights my daughter and I observed in the Western sky. However, my wife and son both reported seeing other objects to the East. They saw two dimmer objects compared to those seen the West. They seemed higher and farther away. First she saw two separate lights come close together and they appeared to cross each others flight path. One light continued on its flight path, while the other turned into three distinct luminous objects, and then quickly merged into one object again.

It is interesting to note that this observation was made in the medium-sized city (population 87,000) of Chico, CA. The Chico Municipal Airport is not far away from the observed lights and the lights appeared to be fairly close to the usual air-traffic patterns of the airport.

Posted 2014-05-02