2007-07-25 - Hatfield Hertfordshire (UK/England) - Oval

dull red glowing elongated and tapered cylinder silently travelling overhead in a dead straight line.

I was in my back garden and noticed something unusual traveling form the NNE direction. It was a dull red glow at first, the type of glow that iron at about 400/450 centigrade gives off when heated. As it came more overhead I could make its shape to be like a cylinder tapered at both ends, or a stretched ellipse. The glow was amorphous: it did not have sharply delineated edges, neither was it one uniform solid red colour, but it was obviously an object and not just a shapeless glow.

It was traveling in a dead straight line almost directly overhead and was silent. I watched it pass over. I expected to see navigation lights and headlights like on a plane or cabin lights along the side like a passenger plane but there were none at all; just a dull red glow all over, slightly fainter at each end. I could not make out any shape or shadow where wings were expected to be either. As it traveled away from me I looked for engine glow but there was none and still completely silent.

It seemed to be traveling at about the same speed as a passenger plane pretty soon after take off when it is no more that a five thousand feet up. Size is even more difficult to estimate. It was shorter and wider than a passenger plane fuselage, but not knowing how high up this thing was make it impossible to know its real size or speed.

I have seen countless passenger planes lots of helicopters any many military type planes too but nothing like this. I used to be into astronomy too and know what a satellite, meteor, meteorite, or fireball look like. It was a completely cloudless night and the full moon was up but obscured from view on the other side of my house.

I have spent many many hours sky watching with telescopes binoculars and my eyes and never seen anything remotely like this before