2002-01-07 - Pasadena, TX - Light

multiple lights bring on heavy air traffic from militray base

my wife, my son, and I were leaving a resteraunt and noticed a group of lights in the sky that seemed out of place. as we drove home, heading due east,(down Spencer highway towards La Porte) we watch the lights there were three of them, the one on the right( most northern ) and the highest, "faded" a little and headed in a northern direction quite rapidly, until we could not see it anymore due to the buildings. the one on the left (southern) dropped lower and then "shot" south bound very fast and was gone. the middle one just hung there, moving only slightly to the left and right and up and down. it got brighter and then dimmer, it was yellowish in color with a hint of a red and blue shimmer or twinkle. we thought it might be a plane heading right for us but i have never seen a plane coming form that direction or heading to that direction. my wife suggested that it might be a helicopter with the search light on. it seemed like the logical answer and i was about to go inside. thats when i started looking around in the sky and notice what would become the stranger thing than the light. it was all of the air traffic...13 or more aircraft all converging toward the light. many from the local air force base down here. we considered all of the airports and local and military fields yet the only one would have been the La Porte field which only caiters to personnal aircraft and heli's, which would make for a nice answer, but why all the air traffic? as we watched and tried to figure out what was going on the remaining light dimmed to a pin point and started moving north and most of the air craft headed north as well, but three large aircraft circled around and around for about another 15 minutes. the whole event lasted about 45 minutes to an hour. it was due east of my location which change from the middle of Pasadena the the west side of Deer Park. Ellington Air Force Base is about 5 to 6 miles south of my house. and the lights were about 25 to 35 degrees from the ground. at first i thought it was just aircra! ft and d idn't think to get the camera and by the time that i realized something was going on i didn't want to leave the scene, and soon after it was all over with.