2005-03-12 - Ashland, OR - Sphere

Bright star-like object appears during the day.

While outside working in the yard I looked up to to watch a Bi-plane fly overhead. It was coming from the north-west and looked to be on landing approach at the Ashland airport. As the plane passed overhead I noticed an odd spherical object much higher in the sky. The object was chrome and looked like a bright star-though it was noon on a nearly cloudless day. The object seemed to "fidget" in the sky moving *slightly* in random directions. At first I thought this was simply the movement of a band of sirus clouds above it but when I lined up the clouds with a stationary treebranch above me the movement did not correspond. The size of the object is difficult to discern given I have no idea how high it was. After watching a jet aircraft fly over later I would say the object was about twice the size of a jet flying at 42,000ft. I left to get binoculars after watching it for about three minutes. The object was gone after I returned about five minutes later. I would stress that I never would have noticed this object had the plane not drawn my attention. The plane flew directly over head, bisecting my line of sight between myself and the object. Also, the object didn't appear odd to me until I ran out of explainations for what it could be. I took several digital pictures of the object from my camera phone; though I havn't bothered to look at them as the resolution is very poor.