2000-01-20 - Memphis, TN - Other

An arc-shaped object, moving at possibly a high rate of speed, was seen moving from overhead to south. The object was almost invisible, but seemed to be reflecting ambient light either from ground lights or from the eclipsed moon, as the color was almost that of the eclipsed moon.

At about 10:22 CST, my brother-in-law and I were outside in his backyard. We had been observing the lunar eclipse through his telescope, but having become bored with that, we turned the scope on M42 in the constellation of Orion. I had already located M42, my brother-in-law was in the process of changing the lens to a higher power while I was observing the constellation and waiting. I noticed movement above me. Looking directly overhead, I saw what I first took to be an atmospheric disturbance, like a vortex of air. The night was exceedingly clear and full of stars, without much ambient ground light, and there was no wind. However, the leading edge (as this was the direction it was moving) of the object or vortex was faintly illuminated by a light of nearly the same color as the eclipsed moon (reddish-brown). It was almost invisible, and for a moment, I doubted what I saw, thinking perhaps it was a floater in my eye. I asked my brother-in-law to look, and he immediately spotted the object and exclaimed "what is that?" The object, as I said, was an arc shape, about 90 degrees of a full circle, with a relative size of a baseball held at arm's length. Within the arc, there was no apparent blocking of the starfield, such as there would have been had the object been spherical or disk-shaped and reflecting light on its leading edge or underside. It moved very quickly from overhead to between Sirius and the constellation of Orion, toward the southern horizon, when it seemed to pass beyond our range of vision. There was no sound, and no wind. I would guess that it was visible no more than six seconds. In addition, the arc shape did not remain constant, as it would if it were the leading edge or underside of a spherical or disk-shaped object. It seemed to flow, not-unlike the way a line of geese or ducks flow and waver as they fly. My brother-in-law, who has better eyesight than I do, even said that he thought it was numerous objects flying in an arc-shaped formation, but that they flowed and shifted, not unlik! e geese. However, I have considerable experience 'in the wild' and have seen flights of migratory birds both during the day and at night. First of all, to have formed this impression of an arc, there would have to have been numerous birds flying at a great height, much to high to have been seen from the ground at night. If the same formation had been seen during the day, and if they were ducks or geese, then they would have had to have been moving at super-sonic speed. To move across the sky in that amount of time, the birds would have had to have been much closer to the ground, in which case they would have been easily discernable as being birds of some sort, and at that height, given the size of the arc, could not have been more than five or six birds, in which case they could hardly have been mistaken for an arc shape. Also, they made no sound, whereas ducks and geese will honk and quack as they fly, and even when not, you can hear their wings - but there was no sound. Instead, my best description of the object is of a non-solid sherical object, clear, with light either reflecting along its forward edge or underside. As to size and speed, I can only hazard a guess or impression, as there was nothing to judge by; it could have been very large and high and moving very fast, or small and low and moving slowly. But my impression was that of an object about the size of a house, flying at two-to-four thousand feet, at about the speed of a cruise missile.