2007-08-04 - Canaan, ME - Sphere

An fast flying ornage sphere, flaring brightly each time it made 90 and over 90 degree turns. Seen by 8 people.

This sighting occurred on Saturday, the evening of the 4th of August in Canaan Maine. My friends and I have a regular camping spot that we meet at just about every weekend during the summer to camp and cook out and enjoy the spectacular view. The spot is on a ridge, and known locally as "The Pinnacle." This night, it lived up to its name.

From the Pinnacle, an observer has an expansive view of a large lake valley oriented more or less due west, with the north and south views open before the tree line by about 75%. The valley is bordered on all sides by long low ridgelines, like the one we were camping on.

My friends and I were cooking dinner on an open fire when my girlfriend mentioned that she could see a light moving in the distance. I stood up and looked where she was pointing and could see an obvious orange orb, having approximately the size color and brightness of Mars on one of its closest approaches. The orange orb was moving parallel to our ridge, in a more or less south to north direction. The were no features on the orb other than its clear spherical shape. No protrusions of wings or tail, and no lights to speak of, blinking or otherwise. It was the lack of running lights that first made me really question what we were seeing.

At that point, I called it to the attention of my friends and we all started watching it. It was obviously very far away, but for that, it was moving very fast to our perspective. Much much faster than a plane would have. For nearly five minutes we watched it cross about half of the full sky from our point of view, and then it suddenly flared bright arc welder white and at the same time made a 90 degree turn to the east and started coming more or less toward our position. When that happened we all gasped as one and all conversation that been going on as to its nature ceased. From this point until it vanished later, we were silent. It traveled for another three or four minutes, seeming to approach almost right over us. and then just as suddenly flared again and made another turn, of over 90 degrees this time, so that it was heading about northwest. We watched it for another couple of minutes until it vanished beyond the treeline.

After that we started talking about what we had seen and tried out different explanations to try to explain it away, but nothing fit. A satellite wouldn't have changed directions and flared the way it did. Neither would the space station. A meteorite would have burned up after only a few seconds, not ten minutes, and certainly not changed direction multiple times. A helicopter would have had running lights, and considering how high up we were, would have been clearly visible as such. Also, it would not have been self-illuminated over its whole body.

One of the main things that interested me was the fact that it didn't slow in the least when it made its turns, as if inertia didn't exist. At the speed it was going, inertia would have required it to slow down, and that's assuming a plane could even make the angle of turns this thing was making, which to my knowledge, they cant.

Just as confirmation of everything we were thinking, about twenty minutes after the sighting we saw a pair of what were obviously planes flying fast and at high altitude. Whether by coincidence or not, they were streaking in the direction of where we last saw the orb. Chasers perhaps? At any rate, the difference between the planes and the orb we saw were obvious, and just cemented the unusual qualities of what we had seen that night. Some of my friends are a bit more skeptical of these sorts of things than I am, but even they were left speechless and agreeing that what we had seen was definitely beyond conventional explanation...