Two bright amber lights hovering, separating, rejoining, then leaving in different directions silently.
Nearly a year ago, on the evening of April 8, 2004, I was standing in my backyard patio looking at the clear night sky when I observed 2 big, bright, yellowish-amber lights hanging in the southwestern sky approximately 35 degrees above the horizon.
At first I couldn't figure out which 'planets' these were being so bright and below the orbital plane of the planetary solar system. These objects were much brighter than the apparent magnitude of Venus and of course a different color. I then located ice-blue Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and maybe either Uranus or Mercury - they were all where they should have been.
Then I thought they must be 2 hovering helicopters but being that bright they would have to be very close and I should be able to hear them. These lights never made a sound the whole time. My son, unbeknownst to me at the time, had been standing in the street in front of my house to get better reception from the cell phone as he was calling his aunt and uncle in Richland, WA.
He saw these same 2 lights climb out of the southwestern horizon (which I had not) and then stop and hover. He too was puzzled and described the phenomenon to his aunt while still on the phone. He then walked through the house and into the back patio to tell me but as I have said, I was already watching them at that point.
As we looked, the left light only receded back down toward the southwest to approximately 20 degrees above the horizon, stopped, and hovered there for about 2-3 minutes. Then, on its way back up to join the other light, it emitted what looked like 3-4 streams of sparkling lights or projectiles that reminded me of tracer bullets or Roman candles.
For an instant, it scared me so my heart stopped as I truly thought we were under some sort of attack. (Too many war and space movies I guess!) Now the left light had rejoined the other one and they both just hung there.
I went inside the house and got my binoculars which revealed the big, bright, amber lights, both left and right, to be actually 4 steady, separate lights on the corners of a perfect square. These two bright amber lights, continued to hang there for about 4 more minutes then the left light began climbing up the sky until it was directly overhead (12 o’clock position). It moved at about the apparent speed of a satellite but it was obviously no satellite as it was a hell of a lot closer, bigger, and brighter.
When it got to the 1 o’clock position on its northeasterly course, the lights instantly disappeared as if being turned of by a switch.
When I went back to look for the right light, it was gone. My son said he had watched it depart on a course 90 degrees to the other light, in a northwesterly direction. He said it appeared to drop a couple of tiny red dots vertically downward and then it too suddenly disappeared. Neither my son, who is a college graduate, nor I was able to explain this phenomenon to each other.
In the ensuing days, I scoured the newspapers and watched the TV news but not a peep mentioning anything about this. I asked several fellow pilots in my flying club, and after some joking at my expense of course, none had observed anything as they were inside their houses that night. I also called the Traffic Control Tower at Buchanan Field in Concord, CA several days later and no one had observed it.
What really boggles my mind is the fact that in a large metropolitan area of several million people, you’d think at least a few people would be outside their houses looking up at the night sky to see this phenomenon, and knowing this could not be explained as ‘conventional aircraft, satellites, or planetary behavior’, would therefore report it to someone. Of course, neither did I, officially, until now.
This has been on my mind for almost a year now, and it wasn’t until I saw the Peter Jennings Special on UFOs a few days ago that I learned of your site for reporting this sort of phenomenon. So here I am and now you have it.
Nearly a year ago, on the evening of April 8, 2004, I was standing in my backyard patio looking at the clear night sky when I observed 2 big, bright, yellowish-amber lights hanging in the southwestern sky approximately 35 degrees above the horizon.
At first I couldn't figure out which 'planets' these were being so bright and below the orbital plane of the planetary solar system. These objects were much brighter than the apparent magnitude of Venus and of course a different color. I then located ice-blue Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and maybe either Uranus or Mercury - they were all where they should have been.
Then I thought they must be 2 hovering helicopters but being that bright they would have to be very close and I should be able to hear them. These lights never made a sound the whole time. My son, unbeknownst to me at the time, had been standing in the street in front of my house to get better reception from the cell phone as he was calling his aunt and uncle in Richland, WA.
He saw these same 2 lights climb out of the southwestern horizon (which I had not) and then stop and hover. He too was puzzled and described the phenomenon to his aunt while still on the phone. He then walked through the house and into the back patio to tell me but as I have said, I was already watching them at that point.
As we looked, the left light only receded back down toward the southwest to approximately 20 degrees above the horizon, stopped, and hovered there for about 2-3 minutes. Then, on its way back up to join the other light, it emitted what looked like 3-4 streams of sparkling lights or projectiles that reminded me of tracer bullets or Roman candles.
For an instant, it scared me so my heart stopped as I truly thought we were under some sort of attack. (Too many war and space movies I guess!) Now the left light had rejoined the other one and they both just hung there.
I went inside the house and got my binoculars which revealed the big, bright, amber lights, both left and right, to be actually 4 steady, separate lights on the corners of a perfect square. These two bright amber lights, continued to hang there for about 4 more minutes then the left light began climbing up the sky until it was directly overhead (12 o’clock position). It moved at about the apparent speed of a satellite but it was obviously no satellite as it was a hell of a lot closer, bigger, and brighter.
When it got to the 1 o’clock position on its northeasterly course, the lights instantly disappeared as if being turned of by a switch.
When I went back to look for the right light, it was gone. My son said he had watched it depart on a course 90 degrees to the other light, in a northwesterly direction. He said it appeared to drop a couple of tiny red dots vertically downward and then it too suddenly disappeared. Neither my son, who is a college graduate, nor I was able to explain this phenomenon to each other.
In the ensuing days, I scoured the newspapers and watched the TV news but not a peep mentioning anything about this. I asked several fellow pilots in my flying club, and after some joking at my expense of course, none had observed anything as they were inside their houses that night. I also called the Traffic Control Tower at Buchanan Field in Concord, CA several days later and no one had observed it.
What really boggles my mind is the fact that in a large metropolitan area of several million people, you’d think at least a few people would be outside their houses looking up at the night sky to see this phenomenon, and knowing this could not be explained as ‘conventional aircraft, satellites, or planetary behavior’, would therefore report it to someone. Of course, neither did I, officially, until now.
This has been on my mind for almost a year now, and it wasn’t until I saw the Peter Jennings Special on UFOs a few days ago that I learned of your site for reporting this sort of phenomenon. So here I am and now you have it.
No
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
On
No
No
Yes
No
No
No
No
San Francisco Bay Area
USA
About 20-30 minutes
About 20-30 minutes
rectangle
CA
Occurred : 4/8/2004 10:30 (Entered as : 04/08/2004 10:30) Reported: 3/1/2005 4:25:17 PM 16:25 Posted: 5/24/2005 Location: San Francisco Bay Area, CA Shape: Rectangle Duration: About 20-30 minutes Characteristics: There were lights on the object, The object emitted other objects, The object emitted beams
Two bright amber lights hovering, separating, rejoining, then leaving in different directions silently.