2003-08-30 - Seattle, WA - Cylinder

Shiny cylndrical object hovering over downtown Seattle

My wife and I were walking in downtown Seattle on Sunday, 08/30/03. The weather was clear and sunny. We had walked to Pike Place Market and exited out to Post Alley to go and look at some of the furniture stores. As I waited outside while my wife looked in a shop, I looked up and noticed a shiny, cylindrical object hovering over the city. It appeared to be motionless, but occasionally it would appear to rotate slightly because the quality of the sun's reflection would change on its surface. I assumed that it was a helicopter, but I couldn't see any rotor blades. My wife came out of the store and I pointed the object out to her and we watched it for around 10 minutes. It didn't move during that time. We continued walking, and we went in a few stores over the next 20 minutes and each time we came back out onto the street the object was still in the same location, still rotating slightly causing the sunlight to glint off it. At one point, we stopped to watch an aircraft fly past it and as we did, we noticed a very tiny speck of white light (which I assumed to be a satellite or perhaps the ISS going past) travel past the object and stop. We continued to walk, and when I looked up again, the dot was gone but the cylyndrical object remained. After we had observed the object for approximately a half hour, it started to slowly drift to the southeast and we lost sight of it over the tall buildings in downtown Seattle.