2009-03-12 - Amboy, CA - Light

4 lights in diamond shaped formation hovering in the california desert, then dissapearing.

I am a 32 year old night photographer, living in Oklahoma at the time, but now living in Germany. I was driving down Route 66 on March 12th, 2009 at about 0:25 local time. I was driving former Route 66 between Essex, CA and Amboy, CA. I drove over a hill, where i suddenly saw 4 lights just hovering in a valley, in a diamond shaped formation. I guess those lights were about 5-7 miles away. Those lights were round, orange lights. I can't tell how big they were, but they seemed pretty big from the distance, i would guess at least 15 feet in diameter. They were solid orange, not flickering, not blinking, not changing colors. Just bright solid orange. It seemed like they were hovering about 50-200 feet above the ground. While they were hovering there, i heard no sounds or noises at all. You could see the lights were bright enough to illuminate a pretty big area in the valley.

My location was at http://maps.google.de/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=de&geocode=&q=34.565853,-115.489876&sll=34.562697,-115.490298&sspn=0.026082,0.055747&ie=UTF8&ll=34.501464,-115.557289&spn=0.208807,0.445976&t=h&z=12 and the lights could be seen at a west/southwest direction from there, at what i guess was about 5-7 miles away. The whole area is pretty much abandoned. Amboy is nearly a ghost town, there is virtually no traffic there (in over 1 hour, i didn't see any oncoming or passing cars). There are train tracks running not to far from Route 66 though and there seems to be a pipeline, since there was a pump station that i passed earlier.

As soon as i drove over the hill and saw those lights, i pulled over, turned off my engine and my lights, grabbed the camera (which was readily mounted on a tripod, since i was doing night photography about 15 minutes earlier and placed the camera and tripod on the rear seats) and started taking a picture. I did a 1 or 2 minute exposure or so, and in that time i realized that those lights are slightly moving individually. The right light was not moving at all, the top light was slightly moving to the left, the left light was moving to the bottom right and the bottom light was moving up. Shortly after taking the picture, the bottom and the left/right lights were forming one line, with the top light above them. That all happened within a few minutes though.

I wanted to take another picture of those lights, when the left light started moving sideways and dissapeared (kind of just turned off) with multiple loud "explosion/thunder" noise. The other 3 lights simply faded out a few seconds after that. I heard no unusual noises while those lights lasted, but i did hear some very deep short thunder/explosion noises. Not like rolling thunder, but like short "boom" noises a few minutes after i saw those lights.

I waited for about 10 more minutes to see if they would come back, but they did not appear again. Since it was a relatively clear full moon night, i could clearly see into the valley, but didn't see any houses, cars, trucks, aircrafts or other vehicles at all. Since the location is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, i am not aware of any other people that might have seen those lights.

I continued driving westbound on Route 66 and about 4 or 5 minutes later i realized there is another, smaller, orange light a few miles behind us directly on Route 66. I stopped to see if that might be another car, but it didn't seem to be one. That was another orange light, but way smaller than the other one. I couldn't tell if that light was on the ground or only a few feet above the road. It didn't come any closer and didn't seem to move, and also, after another minute or so, it dissapeared. I am not sure if that was in any way related to the previous sighting or if that was just another car or light from one of the pump stations/train signals or so.

The picture i took is available at http://michaelkesler.net/blog/uploads/UFO4.JPG and a cropped version of the "UFOs" themselves is available at http://michaelkesler.net/blog/uploads/UFO3.jpg .

I am not sure what that was. I am kind of thinking that it might have been some sort of funny military craft, since there is an Airforce Base not too far away from that location. However, i don't know if that could be an explanation for what i saw. I hope you might have any ideas to tell me.