NUFORC Sighting 121893

Occurred: 2015-09-12 01:35 Local
Reported: 2015-09-12 08:33 Pacific
Duration: 1-2 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Saskatoon (Canada), SK, Canada

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

Large, pulsating orange light passing from east to west on a steady path

Awakened by a noise, I looked outside our bedroom window, which faces south. The source of the noise turned out to be the voices of a couple walking on the sidewalk in front of the house, but I immediately noticed a large orange light off in the distance to the southeast over the couple’s heads. At first, I thought it was the moon.

The light was about as large as a new crescent moon and the color of a rising harvest moon. Then I saw that it was moving, from east to west. I wondered if it might be an aircraft. It’s apparent height and speed and its flight path were similar to the police plane that patrols over the freeway south of the city. However, this light had no navigation lights and was much larger than any aircraft I have seen passing by at that angle above the horizon, near or far.

I strained to listen for any sort of aircraft sound, either the propeller noise if a small aircraft of the distant roar of jet engines, but all I could hear through the open window were the voices of the couple walking by. Otherwise, the night was dead silent. Because the light was so unfamiliar looking, I couldn’t tell how far away it might be. As the light continued on it’s path, reaching about south of my position, I noticed that it was pulsating or perhaps had started pulsating, going from very dim to very bright about once per second. At its dimmest it was still plainly visible and at its brightest it was quite a bit brighter than the ISS would be.

A few seconds later, it became obscured by a tree in front of the house. By that time I had probably been watching it for about half a minute. Although I could occasionally see the light through gaps in the branches, it took about half a minute for it to emerge back into unobstructed view. It continued on the same path, still pulsating from bright to dim about once per second. I watched it for about another half a minute or more, until I lost sight of it behind neighbors’ trees to the southwest. A few seconds before it went behind the trees, I thought that it might be turning slightly to the northwest, but I couldn’t be sure.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t an aircraft. Its flight path was too steady and fast and it looked too far away to be a Chinese lantern, although I can’t rule that out entirely. The couple walking on the sidewalk appeared to be unaware of the light. I looked at the clock and saw that the time was 1:35 a.m. Before going back to bed, I pushed my face close to the window to look over as much of the sky as possible. I wanted to see if any stars were visible, because at that hour it almost seemed as if the sky might be overcast (it gets hard to tell these days as our growing city emits more light pollution). The sky was somewhat hazy, but the brightest stars were visible overhead through our urban skyglow. With no cloud cover, the light could have been any distance away.

Posted 2015-09-17