2004-01-24 - Greensboro, NC - Disk

Bright disc shaped object seen over the Greensboro airport during clear conditions in the early afternnoon with many airplanes visible

Girlfriend and I were out on our back deck watching how the jet stream was affecting the speed and direction of airplanes in the sky. We were watching one plane flying east and one plane flying west and remarking how much the speed was affected. I live north of the PTI airport and glanced in that direction. There was a extremely bright disc shaped object in the sky over the airport at a high altitude. It seemed to be higher than the planes were flying. I got my girlfriends attention and pointed out the object. the only thing to compare it to was how Venus has appeared recently in the nighttime sky. She thought it must be a star and I myself remarked that it could possibly be Venus. As we watched the object appeared to be getting closer. At the time there were at least six airplanes visible in the sky and each one was leaving a vapor trail behind it. This object was leaving no trail and appeared to be coming straight down vertically and not horizontally like the airplanes. The object suddenly seemed to shift direction and begin to move straight up into the sky. It was getting smaller but was still incredibly bright. A small cloud passed in front of the object but the object was still clearly visible through the cloud when suddenly it just blinked out. When the cloud passed nothing was there anymore leaving us at a loss for what it could have been. The cloud was small and there was no way it could have gone in any direction but straight up without us seeing where it went.