2004-12-04 - Burlington, IN - Triangle

Orange flashes followed by appearance of objects

Last Friday, Decemeber 3rd, 2004, I was driving to Kokomo, Indiana from Lafayette, Indiana. While heading eastbound on State Road 26 at around 8:30 pm, give or take about 15 minutes, an orange burst of light caught my attention in my peripheral vision. The night was clear, there were no clouds. I saw an orange light, at first like a dim star, which grew in size or intensity to about four times the size and brightness of Venus. Then another light seemed to grow near this one in the same manner, at about 10 o'clock the original objects position. Then the first object faded out followed by the second. This took place over a 10-20 second period. After this happened, I noticed two objects remaining equidistant circle the area. From my position facing east, they started at the eleven o'clock position and moved to the two o'clock position, and then back again, from left to right. Vertically, if the ground is at 90 degrees and straight up is zero degrees, they were at about 50 degrees up. I have no experience judging distance so this is the only way I can relate it, I hop it helps! Once these two objects returned to the position I originally noticed them, I noticed several other objects, three, I believe. They converged in one central area of the sky.

At this point I pulled off the road to watch them more closely at the state road 26 and state road 29 intersection. I observed the same appearance of the orange lights that I described earlier. Each time I witnessed that, I observed another object. They totalled seven at this point. They were flying in all directions in the sky, but circling to the north of 26. They were about one half the brightness of venus. At some times they were flying quickly while others seemed to maintain position.

The objects themselves flashed white, but intermittently. This is why I was so interested in them, never seeing an airplane like that. The two objects that were keeping the same distance between them as I described earlier seemed to be flashing at eachother. One would flash several times, for different durations, a quick flash followed by a long, at a seemingly random interval. Then the other would start flashing just as the original ended. It reminded me of the lights on a broadband modem, when the computer is connecting to the internet. Once there were seven objects all flying in random directions one flew directly over my position. I can't judge the altitude of it, but it wasn't as high as those jet liners that are seen at night... probably not helping. it was about the size of venus in the sky, but not as bright. The object that flew over me appeared to by triangular, although that was hard to judge. It had three red areas, that looked like the tips of a triangle. the outer points were the brightest, fading into black at the center. It resembled a peice of metal when a torch is held on one side until it gets red hot, fading into the opposite, cooler edge.

The objects maintained their seemingly random flight paths and then fell in line heading southwest at an incredible rate of speed from my position at the intersection . They would have bursts of light that became more uniform in interval instead of the random flashes from earlier, and then accelerated across the sky. I phoned my brother to look outside at home (romney, indiana) to look outside to see if he could see them. He looked east from our house half a mile from US 231 and he saw them. He reported that they were moving at an unbelievable speed and reported that he saw one start flashing really quick and take off. They headed south out of sight.