2008-11-25 - Knoxville, MD - Teardrop

I looked up to see teardrop shaped light , back dropped by a mountain, as it shot towards the ground at a 45 degree angle.

I live in a rural neighborhood in central Maryland at an elevation of about 500 ft.. The Blue Ridge Mountains are about 1 ½ mile west and the South Mountains are about ¼ mile east. The Potomac River is about 1 mile south. I am a 58 year retired social worker with a masters degree. This is my first report of an unidentified object seen in the sky.

On 11-25-08 at about 7:15 p.m., I was shutting my backyard gate in the dark, facing west towards Elk Ridge (in the Blue Ridge Mts., about 1400 ft. elevation) which runs roughly southwest to northeast.

As I looked up, I saw a lighted object rapidly descending at about a 45 degree angle below the ridge line at a very rapid rate of speed. I only saw it for about three seconds before it dropped behind the roof line of a neighbor’s house. The object’s speed was much faster than planes, helicopters, or fireworks that are occasionally seen in the area. My estimation is that the lighted object was in the valley, about ½ to 1 mile from my house.

The lighted object was oblong in shape, wider at the end headed downward, like an elongated teardrop. In relation to how the moon appears in our sky, the length was about the diameter of the moon, with a tail of more diffused light extending further out. The width was about a third of the moon’s diameter. The color reminded me of a Halloween glow-stick, so it had a florescent look. The only sound I noted was that of distant barking dogs, off to the northeast towards the ridge.

I have never seen anything like this before. The lighted object was seen with the mountain range as a back drop. I am frequently outside, day and night, caring for horses and have a familiarity with the sights and sounds of the area. This was certainly out of the ordinary and I have no idea what I saw.