1976-07-21 - Brevard, NC - Sphere

Saw two star-like objects, one bluish, theother orange, remain stationary for at least 5 minutes, then, in sequence and at about a 2 minute interval, zig-zag rapidly for several inches, then accelerate in a straight line and fade away.

My sister and I hiked to the top of a bald mountain, Black Balsam Knob (about 5800'), in Haywood County in North Carolina. It was a cloudless night with no moon at the time. We arrived at the top of the mountain about 9:45pm. We had an unobstructed 360 degree view of the horizon. We ate sandwiches as a late dinner, and gazed at the stars, locating several constellations, the Milky Way, etc. in the clear mountain air. After eating, we lay on our backs and looked at the sky with our 8x35 binoculars. Almost directly overhead, near the constellation Cygnus, we saw two objects that we were uncertain about. Both were slightly larger than stars, one bluish and one orange-tinted. Neither were familiar to us, though we had been amateur astronomers throughout our youth. They were no brighter than Vega, an Magnitude Order 1star. We commented to one another about these two objects of which we were unfamiliar. I looked at the orange-tinted one through the binoculars to see if it might be a planet, but could not identify it as such. As I was watching it, the binoculars stable against my eye sockets and my head resting directly on a rock, I observed the object begin to move in a zig-zag pattern toward the southeast, with abrupt near-ninety-degree turns at each zig or zag. The zig-zags were not large, but were about the distance of the width of my index finger held at arm's length, relative to the stars. After zig-zagging about the distance of the width of my hand held at arm's length, the object accelerated in a straight line for another realtive two inches, then faded from view. The object did not change in intensity of brightness or color during its movement. The duration of movement was about four seconds. This amazed me, and I exclaimed how cool it was and asked my sister if she saw it. She answered with an anxious yes. We discussed what it might have been, and she asked for the binoculars. I gave them to her, and we commented on the strange bluish object. As she was watching the bluish object with the binoculars, and I with my naked eye, it proceeeded to move in the same manner as the orange-tinted object, and faded from view. There were no sounds emanating from either object. We ruled out helicopters due to the no-sound factor, and that we were already at almost 6000 feet. We ruled out airplanes, due to the impossibility of performing the stationary moevement, then the zig-zag. Same for balloons. While they might have been satelites, this does not explain the erratic and substantial zig-zag movement, nor the change from being a stationary object to being a moving one. They were not comets, as these obviously do not have an apparent movement over that small a time-interval. They did not behave like meteors, in that they were clearly visible in a stationary fashion for at least five minutes before they moved. We were left with no aceptable explanation in identifying these. My sister was a rising junior at a state university, and I was a rising freshman at UNC. Neither of us took drugs or alcohol.