2008-07-12 - Henderson, TX - Unknown

Object with pulsating red and white lights appears in the middle of the sky and travels to the horizon at extremely high velocity.

I submitted this report to MUFON almost immediately after the event took place. I was not aware of the existence of NUFORC until just now, otherwise I would have submitted it here as well. I have edited it in a few areas where I might not have been as clear as I would have liked (I was understandably in a kind of fervor at the time), but my original report is still on MUFON.com if you’d like to view that as well. I've spent a lot of time observing satellites, stars, planets, meteors and aircraft, and nothing has baffled me like this.

I was outside my house smoking a cigarette, and I decided to move a lawn chair out into the yard so I could look at the sky. It was the perfect summer night. All I could hear were crickets, and the skies were clear. I was looking about 40 degrees up to the east, and that's when I saw it appear. It was such a shock to me that I can't tell if it rapidly decelerated to a speed at which it was visible (Who knows?) or if it just "turned on its lights". I literally jumped in my seat! We've all seen meteors, they reach a point at which the friction and pressure of the atmosphere builds up heat which produces incandescent light that we see for usually no more than a fraction of a second. If this was a meteor, then I'm Santa Claus. It was already moving when it appeared (like a meteor), but its brightness didn't fade (the lights did pulsate, however), there was no rapid descent, and I was able to follow it to the horizon. Fireballs have been visible over several states before they either impact the ground (or someone's unfortunate car), but this object wasn't as bright as Jupiter, it left no trail, and nothing was seen breaking off of it.

I could be one of the lucky few who have witnessed an earth-grazing fireball, but I doubt it. Here's why: the object had red and white lights, but not lights as you'd expect to see on an aircraft. They weren't points of light; rather there was a center that was brighter than the periphery around it. That's the best I can explain it. The center part wasn't even that bright, but the smooth glow of the light around it really set it apart from anything I'd ever seen.

This object definitely had some size to it. Let's assume this was something entering the atmosphere. From my point of view, the apparent size of the object was no smaller than a commercial airliner at cruising altitude, possibly larger. I'm no expert on which altitudes objects start to glow at as they enter the atmosphere, but it’s definitely more than 40,000 feet, making this thing at least as big as an aircraft, if indeed it is something entering the atmosphere. There are lots of variables involved, but that seems logical to me. As meteors have not developed stealth technology since they are essentially rocks, I would have to imagine that this object would appear on radar if it was nothing more than a very large meteor.

The object was moving northward, possibly to the NNW. It made no sound whatsoever. If this was an aircraft, it would have to AT LEAST be going mach 1 at roughly 10,000 feet. That's as slow and as low as this thing could have been going. The higher up this thing actually was, the faster it was actually going. Common sense, right? I should have been able to hear something if this was an aircraft. B-2's and F-117's are pretty quiet, but they're also subsonic.

All I know for sure is that I saw something extremely unusual travel from 40 degrees above the horizon in the eastern sky to the northern horizon in about five seconds or less. The time at which the event took place eliminates a satellite in low orbit being illuminated by the sun, so either this thing made its own light or was glowing from the heat of entering the atmosphere, possibly both. Please call or email me if you have any questions, or if I'm flat-out wrong about something. Thank you for looking into it for me.