Blinking light being chased by a military (?) aircraft...
My wife and I began to walk home from the neighbors around 21:35. We were looking up at the sky as it was a perfectly clear night with a crescent moon.
I saw a blinking white light zipping along from north, north east to south, south west. I pointed it out to my wife “look a satellite, watch it blink as it tumbles” we watched it until just past 90 degrees directly over us. Then my wife noticed a second object, “Look there’s another one!” only this one wasn’t flashing. I thought “that’s odd that two would be orbiting so close together. We’re lucky to see this.” As the second light passed 90 degrees above us I could make out a flashing collision light that seemed to be mounted to the tail of an aircraft, and we immediately heard the sound of a jet that struck me as quite loud (the first object made no sound at all which had me convinced that we were looking at a satellite).
The distance between the two was maintained until they both disappeared from our view. I would estimate that the objects were around three to five miles apart as they were the distance of a 12” ruler held at arms length. Both objects were moving quite rapidly and were only visible to us for around 45 seconds. We could hear the jet well after it was out of sight. We live near the approach corridor for Charlotte Douglas Int'l, so we are familiar with the behavior, look, and sound of civilian jet aircraft. We heard this jet for nearly a minute after it was out of sight. My wife even commented on how long we could still hear it, “is that the jet we still hear?”. This leads me to believe that this was a military aircraft chasing something with the afterburners lit. This would explain our still hearing it even after it was long of sight, and both aircraft appeared to be at extremely high altitude. My guess would be between 35 to 45 thousand feet as neither appeared much larger than the stars that were visible.
Military aircraft are never seen near here due to the high concentration of civilian aircraft that pass over our area.
((NUFORC Note: Source of report elects to remain anonymous; provides e-mail address only. PD))
My wife and I began to walk home from the neighbors around 21:35. We were looking up at the sky as it was a perfectly clear night with a crescent moon.
I saw a blinking white light zipping along from north, north east to south, south west. I pointed it out to my wife “look a satellite, watch it blink as it tumbles” we watched it until just past 90 degrees directly over us. Then my wife noticed a second object, “Look there’s another one!” only this one wasn’t flashing. I thought “that’s odd that two would be orbiting so close together. We’re lucky to see this.” As the second light passed 90 degrees above us I could make out a flashing collision light that seemed to be mounted to the tail of an aircraft, and we immediately heard the sound of a jet that struck me as quite loud (the first object made no sound at all which had me convinced that we were looking at a satellite).
The distance between the two was maintained until they both disappeared from our view. I would estimate that the objects were around three to five miles apart as they were the distance of a 12” ruler held at arms length. Both objects were moving quite rapidly and were only visible to us for around 45 seconds. We could hear the jet well after it was out of sight. We live near the approach corridor for Charlotte Douglas Int'l, so we are familiar with the behavior, look, and sound of civilian jet aircraft. We heard this jet for nearly a minute after it was out of sight. My wife even commented on how long we could still hear it, “is that the jet we still hear?”. This leads me to believe that this was a military aircraft chasing something with the afterburners lit. This would explain our still hearing it even after it was long of sight, and both aircraft appeared to be at extremely high altitude. My guess would be between 35 to 45 thousand feet as neither appeared much larger than the stars that were visible.
Military aircraft are never seen near here due to the high concentration of civilian aircraft that pass over our area.
((NUFORC Note: Source of report elects to remain anonymous; provides e-mail address only. PD))
No
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
Off
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
Monroe
USA
2 Minutes
2 Minutes
35.01
-80.53
light
NC
Occurred : 3/24/2007 21:35 (Entered as : 03/24/07 21:35) Reported: 3/27/2007 9:46:34 AM 09:46 Posted: 4/27/2007 Location: Monroe, NC Shape: Light Duration: 2 Minutes Characteristics: There were aircraft in the vicinity or aircraft chasing the object
Blinking light being chased by a military (?) aircraft...