2002-12-17 - Newport, AR - Egg

Red Lights outline an object in the sky

I saw this object on 2 separate nights and in different locations. The first time was on December 17, 2002 at 9:00-9:30pm, for about 1 minute while returning from a trip to central Arkansas to my home in Jonesboro, AR. The 2nd observation was on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2002, again between 9:00 and 9:30 pm with another witness from my parent's backyard in Jonesboro. I have been thinking about making this report for a long time but, after reading many reports in this database, I had not read any descibing a similar object until this week. Several days ago I read a report of a sighting on 9/25/03 with a similar object described. Not only that but the sighting was in the same location as my first sighting and at the same time of night.

My first sighting on December 17, 2002 occured as follows: I was driving north on Hwy. 67 and at about 1 mile southeast of Newport, AR I exited 67 on an offramp to the right and stopped at a stop sign before making a right turn on to hwy 14. While stopped at the stop sign I looked ahead and slightly up and saw the object about 30 degrees above the horizon and approximately 1 mile away from me. I am a former private pilot and I would judge the object to have been 300-500 feet above the ground. The object was moving east to west at a speed so slow my guess is it was about 30 mph or less. Although I describe it as an object what I actually saw was about 7 or 8 lights. I had the impression that the lights were attached to an object and may have outlined the shape of it. I do not recall how many lights there were even after seeing it a second time several weeks later. The lights were a dim red and steady, not flashing, and the placement of them would outline a football or egg shape. The outline of the lights was as large as my hand held at arms length. I do not remember the weather that day or night but the object was well below any cloud ceiling there would have been. I watched the object move slowly west for about 1 minute or less (I couldn't hear any sound), made a right turn and continued home on Hwy 14 heading east.

The second sighting of this same (or a similar) object was on Chistmas Eve, December 24, 2002 from my parent's backyard, again at about 9:30pm in Jonesboro, AR. Again it was to the north of us (another witness was with me) and again it was slowly traveling east to west. It was slightly further away from me this time and, as a consequence, the red lights were a little dimmer. I have no doubt that this was the same type of object I had seen two weeks earlier.

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