2004-08-02 - Sebastopol, CA - Triangle

3 lights, bright red, orange, faded white in color in a close, touching, triangle formation, slight cw/ccw rotation.

My girlfriend and I had just gotten home from a quick trip to the store and were walking from our parked truck towards our home. A small plane that was flying north to south had caught my girlfriend's eye. As the plane passed she asked "what is that white thing?" When I looked up I saw what I first thought to be a white pelican. But on further observation the white object appeared to not have the black wing tips of a pelican and was not moving. I ran into the house and got my 20X50 binoculars for further investigan. I was back outside within 15 seconds and could no longer spot it with my eyes. She had kept her focus on it and pointed out the area it was in. When it was first spotted it was aprox. 75 deg. above the eastern horizon. The sky was clear and the setting sun was to our backs. When I arrived back it was now aprox. 60 deg. up and still towards the east. With the binoculars I now saw what appeared to be three brightly colored lights in a close, touching, triangle formation. The lights appeared to be one bright red, one bright orange and one faded white in color. The three seemed to rotate around the center point of the triangle formation. The rotation would cycle clockwise only to the point where the bottom left light would rotate into the top lights position then counter-clockwise back again. The top and right bottom lights would follow all together, top to bottom right and bottom right to bottom left position then back again. After aprox. 5-6 minutes the object could no longer be seen without the aid of the binoculars. I continued watching the object until it slowly disappeared at about 8:15PM. The object when it was last seen was aprox. 40 degs. up in the eastern sky.

In talking with my girlfriend she stated that when she first saw it, it was behind the small plane and about half the size of that plane.

We are regular sky watchers who enjoy bird watching during the day and "space junk" watching at night. This is something we had never seen before, but will forever remember.