NUFORC Sighting 128341

Occurred: 2016-07-04 20:30 Local
Reported: 2016-07-06 19:30 Pacific
Duration: 3 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Viera, FL, USA

Shape: Sphere
Characteristics: Lights on object, Changed Colo

Red sphere seen changing color, intensity and size

At dusk on the evening of July 4, I was in my driveway, looking south-southeast. At about 40 degrees from the horizon, I noticed a small red light, which was rather intense. It appeared to be moving slowly to the northwest at about 1000' or so about a mile away. I stopped to watch it because its intensity sparked my curiosity. I often see planes as we have a few airports and flight paths in the area. Small planes often follow the coastline but this was moving inland.

At first I figured it was a fireworks rocket, but it had no arcing trajectory. As it continued in a straight line, it immediately lost intensity and grew or expanded into an "orb". As the intensity dropped, it developed a soft orange glowing center. I saw no other lights of any color and no strobe lights.

The "orb" then disappeared, fading rapidly and not just blinking off. I assumed it had passed into a cloud. It was still light enough to see a cloudy area of sky behind it, but it was much further to the south. If there were clouds between the object and my position, I reasoned that they would be very thin since I could not make out an actual cloud bank.

I waited for several minutes expecting the light to emerge from any cloud or haze and it did not. It had been traveling toward the lighter area of sky in the west, and had it continued in that direction, I would have seen it clearly and timely.

I hesitated to submit this report as I thought it through for a couple of days. Since it clearly did not have any of the other required navigation lighting, and am assuming it was an anomalous flying object and so others may have noticed it as well.

Posted 2016-07-08

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