NUFORC Sighting 163006

Occurred: 2021-05-03 19:30 Local
Reported: 2021-05-04 23:42 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Brandon, MS, USA

Shape: Sphere

Bright mini sized moon appeared near dusk in the northern sky for about 5 minutes and then zoomed out of sight

Greetings, I’m an automation specialist and have been working in the field of electronic technology for over 50 years. I am 70 years old. I have seen a few odd things in the sky in my life but this was the most unusual and unexplained.

I’m reporting this recent sighting because I have seen nothing about it on any news outlet. I was so shocked by what I saw that I thought it would be global news.

This is my account of what I saw in the sky on May 3, 2021 in Brandon, Ms.

I was outside in the early evening working on a new front porch addition. I noticed that it was 7:30 pm and looked up to the sky as I was sitting down to see if I could see bats flying overhead. I had noticed bats coming out to eat insects the evening before at that same time and wanted to see if they were out again and they were. As I was looking to the north, I saw a very bright object. I thought maybe it was Venus because it was so bright and big but it was in the wrong place and this object had an odd flare coming out of one side of it almost like a comet trail but very short. It sort of looked like what you would see if you threw paint ball on a flat surface and it splattered a bit in one direction– round with a few rays and a bit smudged.

When I noticed the flare, I ran inside to get my binoculars and lost a minute or two looking. All I could fine was my oversize pair so I grab them and went back outside. The object was still there and had grown larger but the flare was gone. I tried to focus on it. My binoculars are very large and hard to handle without a mount but I was able to focus on it and I was shocked into disbelief. I had no idea what I was looking at. It looked like miniature moon about 3 or 4 time the size of Venus as observed from earth and just as bright. It was bright silver with shaded areas and absolutely round.

There was not another light in the sky – no stars, no planets and the sky was still filled with light from the sun as it was setting. There was a storm rolling in, a tornado watch and the sky was a bit hazy. I doubt that there were many people in my area outside looking up at the time. I put the binoculars down and picked up my phone to bring up my astronomy app to see if I could identify what it was that I was seeing. As I was fiddling with my phone to bring up the app ( I have to take my case off because it has a magnet on it and that destroys the accuracy of the compass and it doesn’t work for positioning) the object started dimming and shrinking in size as if it was now heading away from my perspective. When I saw it dim, I knew the app wouldn’t recognize this strange object because it was nothing normal about it.

I decided to try to get a picture of it before it was gone and I did snap a few pictures before it disappeared but the contrast between the object and the sky was low for a camera because it was still pretty much daylight. I accidentally took 2 one second videos and they came out better than the pictures. I put the phone down and watched the object as it narrowed down to a point of light and vanished. When the object was heading away it remained perfectly round as shrunk in size and brightness.

In the two short videos you can see the effect of the atmosphere as it distorts the shape of the object. I am an amateur astronomer and I am very familiar with atmospheric distortion and the distortion I see in the videos tells me the object was above our atmosphere. I wish I could have gotten some photos of it when I first saw it because it was much bigger plus it had a flare at first but I was stunned and was kind of wondering if this was doomsday.

My first thought when I saw the object in my binoculars was that something huge was about to hit earth unannounced. It looked like a rouge moon headed directly for us. When it started moving away, I felt relief as it shrunk in size. I knew that it must be traveling at an extreme speed the way it disappeared. The whole event lasted about 5 minutes. The object pretty much stayed in the same location in the sky and did not jump or dart around. I didn’t see it come into view – it was just there when I looked up and it only moved a little in position when it took off. There was no sound, no flashing light and the only colors I saw was sliver and gray.

Since it was hazy during the observation, I have to question the detail that I saw on the object. I now assume that maybe I was seeing cloud vapor super imposed on the object and that vapor gave it the darker areas in the disk I viewed that resembled the terrain of the moon.

Now my question is – Did anybody else see this object? My guess was that it was an asteroid making a very close fly-by but the news and the astronomy groups are saying nothing about it. It’s seems impossible that no one else noticed it. It’s a complete mystery to me.

Posted 2021-05-20