NUFORC Sighting 174885

Occurred: 2016-01-01 17:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2023-03-05 09:53 Pacific
Duration: Less than 5 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Syracuse, NY, USA
Location details: Witnessed from just west, 10 feet, past the forest next to the fire station on Milton Ave in Solvay.

Shape: Orb

Orb of white light bolted up from ground to cloud level, stopped, then continued beyond the clouds, silently at ~mach 5.

I was walking on the sidewalk looking ahead of myself, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a white light that moved extremely quickly. I saw it in the top left edge of my field of vision. Then i turned my head and looked directly at it. It was a perfect pure white circle. There was no outward glow, but the circle was so lit that i couldn't see any kind of shadow on the surface indicating a shape. From my point of view it looked like a pure white circle, almost like looking directly at the sun or an LED. Imagine someone used computer graphics to place a perfect white circle in a video. That's what it looked like. I couldn't even be sure that it was an orb rather than the top of a flat disk, although for that to be the case it would have to be facing me perfectly. I concluded it's likely an orb. It was about the size of the sun or moon in the sky, so approximately 0.5 degrees. Very quickly after i looked at the light, it continued on the same speed and trajectory it was on before it stopped. There was no acceleration or deceleration as this light changed speed. It was either what appeared to be mach 5, or it was motionless. If it had not stopped below the clouds, it would have just been a streak of light across the corner of my eye.

There was only that one anomaly. I was on Milton ave in Solvay NY, by the woods next to the Solvay Fire Department, and to my left the horizon was a line of maybe a dozen trees that were lined up behind some houses. If you are walking west down Milton after the Fire Department, you will pass a forested hill on your left before reaching this line of maybe 6 houses with the about a dozen trees behind them just before reaching Woods Road. I was walking just past the forested hill when i saw the light move up at the edge of my FOV behind the line of trees behind the houses. I could see the white light being blocked by the branches. So the light rose from beyond the base of the horizon and the trees there, presumably meaning it was around ground level. Then in a moment it was just below the clouds, and instantly stopped. I looked at it and it kept going just as suddenly as it arrived. I was awestruck.

Posted 2023-03-06