2004-04-15 - in-flight/unknown - Cigar

Saw a reflective "orb" above our aircraft during a return flight from Washington, D.C.

I was traveling back home from trip to Washington D.C., and was observing air traffic out the window. After traveling through an area in which contrail activity seemed suddenly elevated, I used the knowledge gained from a sighting I had, which I reported to this site, last month(3/31/04), to search the sky for unknowns.

I spotted what I thought was Venus, except that it was brighter than I have seen before. We were at 35,000ft. (our Captain reported this as our altitude) so this object was, in my amateur opinion, at about 50-60,000ft.

It was either at a stand-still or was moving very slowly, because we passed it within a couple of minutes. Our flight was steady, and we did not bank in any way at any time during the sighting(any banking would have been noticable because of the distant cloud cover providing a horizon-line for comparison). This seemed important because the object moved from the front left of my view, slightly rising then lowering,then moving to the right, and then out of my view.

To the naked eye, it appeared as a bright, bluish-tinted orb. It seemed reflective and was much brighter than the surrounding sky.

I was able to get off one shot with my camera, before my camera's battery died.

Upon reviewing the shot, when I returned home, one can see that it appears more like a cigar than an orb. I thought that what I had done was take a picture of another plane, and it being so far away it's detail isn't easily noticed. But I have issues with this.

First of all, I was viewing a large number of air craft on the entire flight, and every single one of the other planes left some type of contrail. This craft left nothing that I could see, either at the time of the sighting, nor in the photo.

Secondly, it was much higher than we were(as I said, we were at 35,000)and was moving much slower if at all, leading me to the question of what kind of plane would fit this descrption(i.e., SR-71 or U-2 for instance). Not that some other more "ordinary" jet aircraft couldn't fly at that altitude for what-ever reason, but, again, it was barely moving.

I am submitting the photograph, in it's original size, at 916kb, so as to keep it as close to the original as possible.

I had to angle the camera up at approx. 45 degrees, and it was zoomed in to the max, 3Xs. It is a "Sony Cybershot" digital camera.