2002-11-05 - Temecula, CA - Light

Bright lights over Pala Rd in Temecula

At about 6:47pm, my family and I pulled out of our drive, and turned right onto Pala road. As we came around a bend in the road I noticed a bright red light in the sky in front of and to the right of us, at about a 1 o'clock position. It was very big and very bright. I commented about how big it was and asked J. if he thought it could be a satellite. He said it was too big, he didn't know what it was. I watched it for about a minute and a half, the time it would normally take us to get from the end our our drive, to the gas station that is a mile away. The light was hovering stationary in the sky, and had not moved in that minute and a half I was watching. Then it moved across the sky from a 1 o'clock to a 9 o'clock position. I am not sure, but I believe the car in front of us was looking at it as well, because as soon as the light began to move, the person driving the car in front of us slammed on his brakes. The object moved very steadily, there was no wobble or anything like that. It moved across the sky and then stopped and went back into a hover. We were passing it at about that point in time. As I caught my last glimpse of it, it appeared that there were now two red lights. They were only red lights, no other color. They were not blinking, like the smack lights on an aircraft would do. For lack of better words, I would say the light was pulsating, but not blinking.

The light was about as big as half of my pinky nailbed if I were to hold it at arms distance away from my eye. That would mean either a very large object, or a very close object. There were no sounds. A helicopter would have made a sound. I was a helo mechaninc in the Marine Corps and I would have been able to distinguish which helo by the sound of the engine. There was no sound. The only other craft I know of that can hover like that is a Harrier, and that, too would make a very loud and distinguishable sound. We continued on along Pala Rd and I lost sight of it once we passed the Pechanga Hotel. I had it in my site for about 4-5 minutes.

Last night I went outside after dark and watched the air traffic around the area. There is an airport to the north of us and a military base to the south of us. I noticed that none of the lights of the planes that were coming and going were as large as the light I saw on the 5th. I also noted that the direction these planes were coming from were not consistent witht the flight path of the light I saw. I would love to know what it was!