2001-11-17 - Henderson, NV - Unknown

Bright light/red flashing lights

((NUFORC Note: We suspect the witnesses may have been observing a star. However, that is only an educated guess on our part. PD))

Had gone out on the balcony to see if there were any meteors, because I didn't think I would be up early enough to see the climax of the meteor shower the next morning.

I noticed a very bright light in the sky, southeast of my home, and southeast of Black Mountain (I'm pretty much on Black Mountain). At first I thought it was a star, but since I had been looking at the sky for the past few nights, this "star" seemed out of place. It was very bright, bluish white, and seemed to twinkle more than than other stars. It was bigger than the other stars, and didn't have a star shape. I went back in the house, and came out about 15 minutes later. The star was still there... still bright... still flickering. I dont have a telescope, so I tried looking at this object through binoculars. While I couldn't make out any shape, this object was a bright, bluish white light, and I could see red flashes. I thought I saw what appeared to be other color flashes of blue and green, but those might have been illusions. I did see clear flashes of red light, however. Very clear. I had never seen this in a star, so I sat and watched this object for a good half an hour, both with binoculars and without. It just sat there. There were lots of planes out at that hour, and the visibility in that part of the sky was very clear. I thought maybe it was just a plane flying off into the distance, and figured I would see the light get smaller and smaller and just disappear, but it didn't. It maintained the same level of brightness, and the red flashing lights - appearing to come from various areas of the border of the light - were very distinct. It was definitely an unidentified object to me, so I went into the house again to see if I could locate a telephone number to call and report this. I didn't know who to call, so looked on the internet and found your site. Still not sure of whether to report this, I went back outside. At that point, what I saw appeared to be gone.

I'm still not sure I should be sending this in, but I figured that maybe someone else saw what I saw. If anyone was looking at the sky tonite, surely they must have seen this. And if others reported it as well, then numerous reports would only lend to the credibility of the appearance of whatever this was that I saw.

I dont need anyone to contact me unless they need other information. But if there's someone there who can suggest a better way to look at such objects - e.g., an inexpensive telescope; or, what to do if I should see something like this again, well I would certainly appreciate any information. Email contact is fine. I checked the box that says there was an aura or haze around the object. This might have been caused by the binoculars. I don't know for certain.