1996-09-14 - Des Moines, IA - Disk

my friend and i saw a blurry white shape, 'bobbing' far off in a blue sky. we got the binoculars and with those saw that it was a classic saucer. it was canted slightly, moving very slowley from left to right over a very wide horizon - we were on a 2nd story balconey overlooking flat city terrain. it was whitish, with an opalescent 'bubble' top -pale pastes colors. to the left of it 'floated' 6-8 perfectly round white circles in a wavy perpendicular line. there was no detail in the white circles. it took about 15 minutes for these objects to move in the sky from our far left to directly opposite us. at this point one of the (much smaller) white circles - the bottom one- slowley moved up in a straight line into the bottom of the saucer. then the whole group began to slowley move away from us in a straight line - rather than from left to right, until they disappeared into some wispy small cloud cover. my friend, a doctor, whose eye-sight is better than mine, said she could see a green laser-like line shoot out from the bottom of the saucer to the ground a couple of times. for the duration of this event a jet, probably from the local army base, was in the sky, coming from the far right and moving toward the craft. we couldn't tell if it was chasing the craft because we had no way to percieve depth - ie - how close the jet was to us as compared to the craft in terms of latitude. the jet never got close to the craft. the jet, compared to the craft and circles, looked so 'heavy' and 'clunky'...and the craft compared to the jet so ephemeral and light, both in weight and movement. there was no sound , but it was far away.

i submitted a written report to NIDS about a year ago.