1998-06-08 - Newport, RI - Light

Clear night+high visability,2 yellow lights,even shading,no vertical movement,close proximatey,very long visual time

Me and my friend were taking a rest on one of the many boat piers in Newport, comming back from a bike ride around the scenic drive. Being an MP with the National Guard, I consider myself to be very attentive and aware of the unusual and out of the ordinary occurances within my view at all times. It was a very clear night, with light to no humidity, the moon was visable and 3/4 full. I noticed a semi-bright yellowish light hanging in the sky. It seemed to be stationary while comparing it with the moon which was about 3 feet away from the object. We stared at it for quite sometime, about 25 to 30 minutes. During that time we noticed it move slowly to the left and remain stationary for a few minutes, then slowly to the right and remain stationary for a few minutes. It moved back and forth about 3 times, and on a straight horizontal path, no vertical movment at all. From my military experiance with roughly estimating distance to an object, I could tell it was no star, yet lower than an airplane would normaly be, and by movement, no airplane, helicopter or balloon of any type. And no known antenna towers in that direction of the Island. The low intensity and color of the light led me to beleive that it wasnt serving the purpose of a marker or for arial safty. The overall size of the light was about 3/8's of an inch when compared to my pinky finger at arms length. For almost a two second time span, another light appeared to the left, as if it were turned up from a household dimmer switch, and was gone in an instant, the distance from the origonal light was roughly an inch, by perspective. My friend didnt notice the second light. The yellowish light was evenly illuminated, no bright or dim area, and no ring, or signs of any type of propulsion discharge or wake in its path. When I saw the second light come and go, I thaught they might be two baloonists and the second baloon was trying to gain altitude. Baloons are rare but not uncommon for the area. But the closeness of the two, and the consistent round ! shape an d duration of the second light ruled that out. After stareing at the unknown light for a while, and comming to no conclusions as of the source, other than that it wasnt going anywhere in a hurry, I told my friend of an occurance that happened many many years before, that involved the police from roughly 3 local countys giving pursuit of a slow moving object in the sky, which I beleive was first sighted and called in from a small single engine plane. As for my background, I have four years of active military, and twelve years of National Guard, ten years as an MP with the Guard. For my friend of 4 years, he seems normal enough. We very seldom talk of UFO's or paranormal topics, as interesting as they may be. And as for the purpose of reporting this supposed sighting, I came across the web site while browsing and thaught that someone might find the information of use, or amusing.