1997-07-15 - Fairfield, IA - Sphere

extremely bright reflective sphere changed into eccentric cigar chape

At about 17:00 I exited the Wal*Mart store here in Fairfield and I noticed about 15 people in the parking lot staring at something in the sky toward the south. Once I walked to a position from which I could see, I looked up and witnessed what seemed to look like an extremely bright and reflective (clear sky) crystal ball hanging in the sky. It appeared to be about 5 miles to the south and about a mile in attitude. It's size was about 1/4 the size of a full moon. It stayed perfectly still for about 20 minutes, during which time the other observers became bored and left. I stayed. The object slowly began elongating and growing in size on the elongated end, somewhat like a condensed baseball bat (without the knob on the end). The object lost it's highly reflective appearance and seemed to be silvery metallic. It slowly began moving away in a southwest direction and up. It kept moving away in that direction, quite slowly, until it was too small to see. I would (probably highly inaccurately) estimate its largest size at up to 500' from end to end, 50' across on the spherical end, and 100' across and the elongated end.