2008-07-14 - Escondido, CA - Light

Unusual, pulsating blue light near Cygnus

I just finished observing an extraordinary phenomena in the eastern sky, south east of Cygnus. The local time was 10:01 PM (when I first started observing) and the event spanned until 10:10. The object was a pulsating, star-like object that stayed within about 5 degrees south east of epsilon-Cygnus or Gienah. What first struck me was the brightness, near that of Deneb at its peak, but falling to darkness within a few seconds. It repeated this behavior many times. The other aspect was the color, a brilliant blue. This was observed from central Escondido, California - near 33 deg 7' minutes north, -117 deg 3 min west.

So the obvious issue was the elimination of possibilities. First, the object did not travel in a straight line and did not appear to be moving at a velocity for orbital motion, so it certainly didn't seem to be a satellite.

Second it nearly hovered at some points, not characteristic of an aircraft. Considering the time duration it was no meteor. The color and therefore the color temperature, would match a very high temperature object, above 10,000 K. Not a common object near the Earth.

It did move in the sky, so it wasn't a distant astronomical object.

It didn't seem to progress like a balloon, but that is "up in the air". It was no "Chinese lantern" with that intense blue color. There was no sound. It was too long in duration for an Iridium flash, and was too blue. So it could have been a high altitude UAV or other test aircraft with a bizarre blue light. It might have been a balloon with a similar light. It was certainly a mystery and I wondered if it had been observed by others.

I am an engineer and amateur astronomer and have been observing the sky for many years. It was also observed by my wife.


((NUFORC Note: We spoke with this witness via telephone, and he sounds to us to be an exceptionally qualified, and capable, witness. He remains confident that what he witnessed was quite unusual. PD))