NUFORC Sighting 139048

Occurred: 2017-12-09 17:30 Local
Reported: 2018-03-04 10:43 Pacific
Duration: ~15 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Joseph, OR, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aircraft nearby

A string of seventeen large, constant, red light seen in the sky at ~1730 on December 9, 2017

Approximately 1730 (after dark) on December 9, 2017, my partner and I were returning from a work site on the Imnaha River, when he said "look at that". When I asked him what saw, he said that he was seeing lights in the sky.

We stopped our truck and got out to look. Almost directly over us there were seventeen red lights moving from approximately SSW to NNE at a speed that I would estimate to be that characteristic of a very large jet (relatively slowly). The lights were very large (when compared to the strobe lights generally seen on aircraft) and did not cast a beam or blink. There was no other source of light visible around the red lights--no strobes like normal aircraft navigational lights etc..

There was only a slight noise as they passed--nothing like what I would have expected if these were seventeen large jet aircraft passing overhead. The lights were evenly spaced (it isn't possible to accurate estimate the distance between them) and traveled in a very straight line from the time we saw them until they faded into the distance.

I'd like to emphasize that these lights appeared to be very large. Due to the lack of noise, I am assume the objects were at altitude and their large appearance was not due to the fact that they were at a low altitude.

In the Characteristics of Object section, there is an option to indicate whether there were aircraft in the vicinity. When the string of lights was quite a distance beyond us, an aircraft (assumed to be an aircraft based on strobe lights flashing) crossed the path of the red lights and continued on until it went out of sight. The strobe lights never deviated from its apparent line of flight.

Posted 2018-03-08