1988-12-22 - Santa Rosa, CA - Changing

First off, I am a very skeptical person. At the time of the sighting, I was a California Highway Patrol Officer for 6 years and very good at detail and observation. A friens and I were driving fron San Jose, CA. to Mazatlan, Mexico over Christmas holidays in Dec. 1988. It was approximately 3:55 a.m. when my friend kept insisting that I look out the driver's window (he was driving, I was in the passenger's seat). I was busy talking and kept ignoring his request. Finally, just to shut him up, I looked out his window. What I saw made me scream in excitement, not fear. I told him to immediately pull off the road so I could have a better look. I sat on the hood of the car for the next 2 hours writing down my observations. We thought, at first, that what we were looking at was a freak act of nature where a star was unusually close to the earth. It looked like a partical star at first except that it was 3/4 the size of the full moon that was out that night. Also, when we were driving, my friend told me that this object he was looking at did not seem to be left in the distance as we were driving, but rather keeping parallel to us. It was hugh! If the stars in the sky could be compared to a golf ball, this ufo was the size of a over-sized basketball! At first, it was just this white light being eminated from it's center. There was no solidness to it, just lights being refracted. The "star" slowly floated in several directions ( I wrote it all down as to it's positions) with no rhymm or reason. Then it changed colors and a red light appeared in the center of this "star" horizontally and vertically (like a cross), in it's center. It still continued to "float" from left to right and up and down. The object continued to change color as the points of the light continued to grow and shrink with a blue color. (It looked like a starburst that was growing and shinking. At this time, I still thought that it was some unusual astronomical disturbances until this "star" suddenly "ZOOMED" in closer to us! .At this time, I became fearful and jumped into the car. this "star" "ZOMED back and forth without any visible signs of movement! My best analogy would be this, it looked like the opening and closing of a camera lens, (like the aperature of a camera opening and closing. It was as if this "star" "Zoomed" in on us to take a better look! Ithe "star" continued to change colors from white with red, to white with red, to white with red and blue. It contiued to slowly float in various directions and changing shapes. As the sun was rising, the other stars in the sky disappeared except for this one. It was the only object in the sky as the sun rose. The lights disappeared as the sun was rising and I expected the object to disappear. Instead, a thin, long silver/gray line in the sky remained. There was no longer lights, but rather a very bright or very big object remained. As the sun was high in the sky, this "star" slowly drifted higher and higher into the sky until just a pinpoint was visible. It slowly disappeared. As we arrived in Mazatlan, I quickly bought the newspapers to read of the incident. No article was written re: a U.F.O that night. THIS WAS NOT A WEATHER BALLOON OR ANY OTHER MILITARY OR GOVERNMENTAL EXPERIMENT.NOTHING ON THIS EARTH COULD POSSIBLY MOVE AND "ZOOM" AS THIS "STAR DID!