1999-04-15 - Sunnyvale, CA - Light

Stationary lights seen surrounded by circular cloud that shrank in diameter to nothing.

I was taking the trash out at a dark end of the house and happened to notice a bright white light (like a landing light on an aircraft) about 5-10° over the southern horizon and I'd estimate it to have been 6 or 7 miles away over the Santa Cruz Mountains. I'd heard that a couple of planets were in alignment and were very bright appearing so I stopped and studied it thinking that it might've been those planets. It was a perfectly clear night sky, no clouds but this light had a perfectly round cloud around it. I'd estimate it was 3 times the diameter of the Moon. the light was close enough to nearby trees, chimneys, ets that I could tell it was stationary. In the course of 2 or 3 minutes the cloud reduced in size and visibility as did the bright light in the center of it until it vanished. It was very even how it got smaller and dimmer and staying absolutely round. No drifty breaking up like a cloud would do. I went inside and told my wife about it then got my binoculars and! several minutes later went back out to look around and saw the same exact thing all over again from the same direction except it was maybe twice a s far away and it was quite a bit smaller and dimmer by the time I saw it and it was very close to the horizon of the Mountains (but behind them) and I couldn't really get any more detail with the binoculars. I should mention that this part of the sky is a flight path for incoming aircraft I assume for SFO International. I've been around long enough to know that incoming aircraft with landing lights on move and get bigger, not smaller as they approach and don't have accompanying clouds. I was an aircrewman in the Navy and have some experience in looking for aircraft in the skies. I described this to a TWA pilot friend of mine and he didn't have a clue what I'd seen. That's about it.