2007-01-18 - Bovey, MN - Light

Red light paces military jet over Minnesota

It was a clear night and there were quite a few visible stars here in rural northern Minnesota. I was outside with my dogs when I heard a military jet. Because of my rural upbringing, I still look up every time I hear a plane and since I'm 46 yrs old, I've seen a lot of different planes. I know by sound what type of plane is flying over before I see it. I live below the flight path between Duluth International Airport and the Minot North Dakota air base so there is a fair amount of ESE to WNW air traffic over my area, though most of it is pretty high in the sky.

I could tell by the sound and the flight path that this was a military jet of some type and since it was about the time that there was talk of deploying more troops to Iraq, I'd been seeing and hearing military jets fly over more frequently in the previous month.

I looked up in time to see the jet headed West and at the same time, a small red light caught my eye as it came from the South, perpendicular to the path of the jet. The red light was the same size as the satellites that I see, and I couldn't see a definite shape. The red light did a 90-degree turn to the West alongside the jet, and followed the same flight path. I have watched the sky all my life and know the difference between stars, satellites, and meteors, and this was like none of those. I've even seen some meteors that were quite spectacular, including a double one that was bright green, and I knew that wasn't a UFO.

I shoved the dogs inside and yelled for my husband, who had to bolt up a flight of stairs to get outside where I was, and he agreed it was nothing like he'd ever seen before. We watched the plane and the red light until they were out of sight on the horizon. The jet wasn't low in the sky, but a lot lower than the passenger planes that fly over this area, and even at night it was unmistakably military. The red light kept pace with the jet the entire time.

I just kept on wondering what the heck it could be and tried to think of a rational explanation. I guess it was unidentified, it was flying, and all I can say is that I know what it "wasn't". Even if I'd had a camera on me at the time, it wouldn't have photographed well, unfortunately.