NUFORC Sighting 173310

Occurred: 2021-11-15 15:30 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2022-12-06 10:35 Pacific
Duration: 15 minutes (approx.)
No of observers: 1

Location: Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Location details: My backyard - looking south in the sky above Colorado Springs

Shape: Changing

A 'star' faded and changed into a cigar-shaped object.

Summary: This incident happened about a year ago - the day could be off by 1 or 2 days. I live in Northeast Colorado Springs at just under 6,800 feet elevation. From my house I have pretty expansive views of the mountains to the west and the skies over Colorado Springs. I had just retired the week prior from my job as a test engineer for GPS satellite control software and was at home. At about 3:30pm I decided to walk around my backyard. It was still about an hour before it even started to get dark (sunset about 5pm), so I was surprised to see what looked like the evening star (Venus or Jupiter), but it was so early, the sun was still visible in the late afternoon. I thought to myself - this is the brightest I've ever seen the evening star appear in the daytime. (Later, about sunset, I saw the actual evening star and it was a different object - it was not visible at 3:30pm).
The sky was mostly cloudy (I'd say 75% obscured by clouds), not the high wispy ones, but cumulus clouds that obscure the sky. There were openings in the sky between the clouds. I looked to the south and I saw this 'star'- from my location, this placed it about halfway between Peterson Space Force Base and Cheyenne Mountain Air Station. Its position didn't move - as the clouds would come and go moving from right (west) to left (east) the 'star' was still in the same place. After 5-10 minutes the shape changed; it started to get bigger, fade and disperse - it grew in size up to the size of the moon before dispersing.
After another cloud break it was gone, but in its place was this cigar-shaped white object with a black bottom. I could see no wings or tail. It's possible that it could have been saucer-shaped if it was being seen from a side angle - I couldn't tell. It was not the much rounder tic-tac shape seen in other reported accounts. It appeared to me to be probably above 14,000 or 15,000 feet high because the clouds were also obscuring the upper portion of Pikes Peak, which is 14,115 feet. The clouds kept moving at a pretty good clip from west to east and would repeatedly hide/show the object. At one point, I could see a regular jet flying almost directly behind it from west to east because I could see its contrail - it appeared to be the normal very small size of a jet cruising at 35,000 feet. But this object was much bigger and so had to be much closer. I would say it was about the size of a commercial airplane fuselage as it would appear at 15,000 feet; however, it didn't move. For it to be a plane, it would have to have been flying directly into the wind at the exact same speed as the wind in order for it not to move - not likely in my opinion.
I thought - what a perfect location in which to spy down on one side to see Cheyenne Mountain and the other side to spy down on Peterson. It was there for at least 5 minutes and Peterson didn't launch any fighter jets to chase it. (Most of the time I can hear those louder jets take off from Peterson, but I didn't hear any). Again, I thought this thing must be visible on Peterson's or NORAD's radars, so if they didn't chase this thing, it must either be 1) some kind of known military object or 2) other object not thought to be a threat; otherwise, they would have chased it or something. They didn't. Then after another cloud break, it was gone completely. I never saw it move - it just disappeared from its location.

Posted 2022-12-22