2004-10-31 - Manhattan, IL - Light

Red Lights seen from 2 different locations at same time while on phone with family member.

I recieved a phone call on my cell from a family member who lives in Tinley Park IL at 20:06 on 10/31/04. She said to look to the East and see if I can spot 3 red lights just hovering in the Eastern sky. My wife and I, along with a few neighbors were siiting in my driveay enjoying the evening and waiting for Trick or Treaters when I recieved the call. After a few seconds I, along with 2 of my neighbors, spotted 2 red lights in the East, North East, sky, about 20 degress above the horizon with 90 degress being directly overhead. One light was directly above the other separated by a few degress. The bottom one moved a little South then went back to being right under the other one. The sky was becoming overcast so we lost them both with in a few seconds of each other.

I received another phone call about 90 minutes later from the same family member telling me to go look outside again because one of the lights had returned. From her vantage point she told me to look a little to the West from dirctly overhead. I could not see any thing in that direction. So I looked in the direction where she lives and we, (my wife, son, and I), saw 1 red light in the sky identicle to the ones earlier. The light was North, North East from my location. I live South West of Tinley by @ 12 miles or so. I knew we were looking at the same light because I could see airplane traffic in the vicinity and I would ask her if she saw the same traffic and she concurred. We watched this together over the phone for a minute or so before I lost it in the cloud deck. Soon after that she lost it too.

I am an aircraft technician by trade and my hobbies include astronomy and photography. I had a few of my pictures of the Perseid Meteor shower on display at the planetarium in Chicago. My neighbors and my wife and I also enjoy satellite watching on summer nights. I am familiar with the differnce between aircraft, satellites, and meteors as to their apperance in the night sky.

As a point of interest, I saw 3 white, satellite colored objects, back in late August at @ 21:00 passing directly over head in a triangle formation. They were heading South with the base of the triangle leading the way. It was not a solid object between the points of light because I saw starlight between them. No one else saw this for I was alone at the time. As I stated before, I look for satellites all the time and have been since I first saw one as child. I've spotted countless times were there were more than 1, sometimes 4 satellites visible at the same time in the sky, but I've never seen where they seemed to be flying in perfect formation, and had the same brightness between them. I did report this to a different website at the time but to no avail. I came across your website in searching for others who might have witnessed this. That's when I found out about the other "red light" sightings in Tinley Park back in August.