1999-11-09 - Phoenix, AZ - Light

I saw a light flying across the sky, from west to east, at an extraordinary speed. It flew in a straight line, slowed a bit then speeded up again, it traveled a great distance in seconds,near the horizon it veered right and disappeared out of sight. I could see many aircraft in the sky, because we were north of Sky Harbor airport. The speed of this light was amazingly fast in comparison to the aircraft in the area. I've seen hundreds of meteors in my life and am positive it was not a meteor, a plane, a bird, a bat, a reflection, a satelite, or a rocket. I've never seen anything like this before and am writing this because I have no idea on what other recourse to take.

I work an evening shift and at 7:30pm two co-workers and myself went outside because they smoke cigarettes. I don't smoke, but just went with them to talk. We went up to the top floor of a four story parking lot for employees of the company. The weather was great, were in Phoenix, there were plenty of stars, were near downtown, so the city lights drown the sky, yet it was easy to see the entire sky from this roof top. Squaw peak mountain is several miles to the northeast of us and I could see a light mist near the peak. Off on the east I could see some light clouds on the distant horizon. Planes could easily be seen circling for a landing or take-off from Sky Harbor airport to the southeast. I saw a huge thick bright meteor to the east headed straight down, very bright with specks of bright green. It burned up and I was impressed with the thickness, brightness, and straight down direction that it had. It seemed very close, but I know these things can actually be very far away. All three of us saw the meteor. We continued talking and about ten minutes later I commented again on how beautiful the meteor had been and the others were agreeing, just then, my friend said whats that, I turned around and saw the light zooming across the sky. My first thought was a plane, it looked like it had a dim red speck on it. I've also seen birds fly by a night at close distances that appear to fast high flying vehicles, but I quickly dismissed this being a plane or a bird. Phoenix is full of helicopters, I see them alot. This was definitely not a helicopter. Way too fast, went very far, fast. I thought it might be some type of reflection. No clouds, it varied it speed, slightly, then veered right. It wasn't a reflection. It happened very quickly and the third person in the group never caught eye of it. I've seen satelites before and I even saw the shuttle fly by one morning as it was about to land in California. This was faster than that. Did anyone else see anything? Just when you think you seen it all....I! was ama zed!