2004-12-20 - Salome, AZ - Circle

Three motionless orange lights appear, disappear, then reappear above Salome, Arizona.

My wife and I were traveling northeast on highway 60 near Salome, Arizona around 6:00 PM PT when we were startled by two very bright orange lights in the sky ahead of us. They appeared to be the size of half-moons and they were about a half-finger length apart from each other (as we saw them) along a horizontal plane. We immediately noted that numerous stars were visible in the sky and that that there were very few clouds. We also noted that there were no mountains in our line of sight. We concluded that these two lights were clearly in the sky and not, for example, car lights coming down a mountain in front of us. About five seconds after these two lights appeared, a third similarly sized light appeared above the one on the left. The three lights remained motionless for about five seconds, then all three disappeared at the same time. We continued to watch the sky as we traveled. About two minutes later, the three lights appeared again in the same L-shaped configuration, although this time they were lower in the horizon and they had moved to the east. They remained illumined for only about five seconds this time and then disappeared again. The lights from two small planes were visible in the sky near the second sighting and the three unexplained lights seemingly dwarfed the lights from the planes. I recalled seeing a documentary on the Phoenix lights of 1997 and after reviewing pictures of this event online, I would say that the lights themselves which we saw closely resembled the so-called Phoenix lights, although they remained motionless while lit and they formed an L-shape rather than a horizontal line.