2009-01-03 - Gainesville, VA - Light

Spectacular Lights seen to separate in Virginia outside Washington DC

At approximately 7:00pm on Saturday January 3 2009 my wife and I went into our backyard to walk our dogs. We were in the backyard for a few minutes when I saw a bright light that seemed stationary in the Northeast sky. I pointed the light out to my wife and than noticed it was slightly moving from north to south. We live 40 miles outside Washington DC, near Dulles airport, so we do see a lot of airplane traffic.

I started to think we must be looking at a slow moving airplane. As the light got closer I noticed there wasn't any blinking lights and this light was not acting like a conventional aircraft. The light would slowly move than stop and stay stationary for several minutes than would start moving again. While we watched the light I told my wife to stay and watch so I can go inside to grab the camera. I ran into the house, grabbed the camera and opened the back sliding glass door. Just as I started filming the light was just making it over my house, I told my wife to meet me in the front yard. As I ran to the front yard and met my wife I again started filming the light, at this point it was slowly flying above Orion, which was just rising in the east. This is when the unbelievable happened. Just as the light was above Orions belt my wife said "Look it's turning around" I couldn't believe my eyes. The light was making a complete U-Turn. But even more spectacular, as the light made the U-Turn, another light continued moving south and stayed on the original path. What I'm trying to say is-the light we were originally watching turned into two separate lights. One made a complete 180 degree turn headed back north and was blue in color, the other light continued south. It seemed to me that these two lights were somehow together or connected and than separated. The light that U-Turned off the original light soon stopped and remained stationary for approximately five minutes as the other light continued south. Soon after the original light was out of sight the U-Turned light started moving ag! ain towa rds the north until it was out of sight.

During this sighting my neighbor was also walking his dog, he saw my wife and I and was also able to see the two lights after they separated. This was our sighting. I really hope someone else saw what we did.

Thanks