1999-09-15 - Cedar Rapids, IA - Unknown

Looking west, at about 20-30 degrees up from the horizon, saw strange light that appeared to be moving very slowly or hovering. Lights did not look like aircraft through binoculars. Had horizontal line of white lights, distinguishable through binoculars, and red lights above and below white row of lights, that seemed to throb brighter and dimmer, not blinking totally on and off. Watched the light in relation to other aircraft moving by, which by the way, seemed to be much more air traffic in that direction than usual.

Looking west, at about 20-30 degrees up from the horizon, saw strange light that appeared to be moving very slowly or hovering. Lights did not look like aircraft through binoculars. Had horizontal line of white lights, distinguishable through binoculars, and red lights above and below white row of lights, that seemed to throb brighter and dimmer, not blinking totally on and off. Watched the light in relation to other aircraft moving by. And, by the way, there seemed to be much more air traffic in that direction than usual. The night sky was very clear. No clouds seen. The object was barely distinguishable with out the assistance of binoculars for me, but my wife who is farsighted, could see without binoculars. I would say that it could have been a large plane going away from us, except that the event took about 6 to 7 minutes. The object moved from about 30 degrees up from the horizon down to the tree level and out of sight, which would be about 10 degrees above the horizon. The object, if moving away from us, would have been going east to west. However, over the 6 to 7 minutes, the object didn't move far, and it didn't appear to grow smaller as it would have had it been moving away. Also, I did not notice in colored lights on what would be the wing tips if looking at an aircraft from behind. One more thing about the object. we had been looking straight up and out toward the west for 5 to 10 minutes prior to it's "arrival". It was suddenly "there", and we had not seen it what so ever before our first visual sighting of it. Both my wife and I had been "scanning" the sky as we do almost nightly over the last two months. The other air traffic over our area, while looking west from the front of our house, was very heavy in the western sky. One aircraft went over us from West to East, fairly low. It also didn't appear to resemble what we typically see when regular airline passenger jets go over. It was also fairly quiet. Could have been military, but I can not verify that. Tonight has not been the first night we have seen "unusual events" in the sky. In august, (I know it was a Sunday evening, and I believe it was 8/13/99) during the "meteor storm", we happened to see the very, VERY bright light in the west sky. It lasted long enough that my wife saw it first and said "look at that" - I saw the tail end of it, and it seemed to last for a good second or two. There was NO TAIL. It came, "out of nowhere, without a tail like other falling stars", according to my wife. I have never seen a falling star like that before. We have also seen a very dimly lit light going quickly across the sky, from NW to SE, directly overhead. About the size of a star. Round, no blinking lights. Looked like a headlight in fog, or a flashlight shining through a sheet of white paper. Small, even with binoculars. Since I didn't write down the dates and times or report those incidents, I won't submit seperate reports for those incidents. However, I wanted to include this information, as my wife and I feel like many things are happening that don't quite fit the norm, and it is the reason why I took the time to write about the event we saw tonight so that it can be recorded... just in case... and so I can remember the date and time (I lose track of time more and more)... You can contact me if you want to. I will let that be your decision. I am not checking the box below that I want to be contacted.