2005-02-22 - Nanaimo, BC - Oval

Two bright, large pill shaped objects fly very quickly across the sky, hover and then slowly fade until gone.

My friend and I had just got coffee and were walking downtown. We had to wait at the busy streetlights to cross, and while we stood around for the light to change, I looked up in the sky and there was a bright, kind of pill shaped object rising out of the horizon to the north (or so?) and it was getting what seemed very close very quickly. I know very well what a regular plane looks like flying at night, and it wasn't like that. There were no individual lights or colours; it seemed more like an ambient orange-red-yell-white strip of colour. At first, I thought it was an illuminated blimp, but it was moving what seemed very quickly and I don't think one could have gone so fast. I yelled to my friend, who also saw and was shocked. For a moment I felt extremely afraid, because I thought it might be a burning aircraft or meteor headed our way. It got to be about the size of an eraser on the end of a pencil, before it stopped and seemed to not move at all for about 10 or 20 seconds. Then, it started moving south (we were facing the east, towards the harbour), much slower than before. It kept moving until it was south and lower in the sky than the moon, about the four o'clock position of the moon. We thought it was immobile again, until we realized that it had moved up a tiny bit, but now was getting very slowly smaller and smaller. My friend yelled something, and I turned to see another one come zooming up exactly where the other had been. It seemed brighter and bigger than the first one, but travelled the exact same path as the former, albeit a bit faster. The colours were also a little more distinguishable - mostly what looked like overlapping orange and yellow white, with bits of red. it moved accross the sky until it was about a thumb's length away from the first one, which now could be mistaken for another star in the sky, were it not for its bright red (almost Mars-like) colour and the fact it was still fading away. Then the second flying thing also began to move up a little, and fade out of site. Soon, the first one had completely vanished, and about two minutes later (we stood and watched the entire thing) the last one too became smaller and smaller and more and more red-coloured, and it also went out like a tiny red star. Really weird. There were plenty of other people downtown that night, so maybe other people saw it too. I have seen lots of different things in the sky but nothing like that - nothing so bright or large. Or something so big move so quickly, and seemingly low (but it was very difficult to tell just how faw away it was).