2009-07-09 - San Jose, CA - Circle

I saw a bright, moving, red light in the sky.

I was walking out from a friend’s house to go home at 23:50 PM on Sunday, July 9th when i looked down the street and saw a red light. It was a bright light in the sky, far away in the distance. It looked like a star, but it was red, and far brighter than any star I have ever seen (besides the sun). It was too bright and did not move like a plane or helicopter, too slow to be a satellite or a shooting star. Similarly, the red light’s movement was erratic thus eliminating any-other known celestial body following a constant orbital path. It was just above the trees down the street, in the southwestern sky. I called back to my friend, who was walking back inside, to come look at the light. We watched the light for approximately 20 minutes. Over the course of the 20 minutes the light grew fainter and fainter. It went higher into the sky for about ten minutes, then started moving further south for about five minutes. It moved very slowly. It moved like it was ! the first stroke of writing a "Y," going up (from the base of the "Y"), and to the left. After about 10 minutes I called another friend with my cell phone and told him to go outside and look at the light. He saw it too. After watching the light for fifteen minutes, it stopped moving. It was dimming faster than it was before. It would flicker, get slightly dimmer, then brighten again. Every time it flickered it would become slightly less bright. Then when it became as dim as the stars around it, it started flashing and falling towards the earth. It moved faster than it did when it was moving in the previous 20 minutes. It appeared to be in a free-fall. It fell for about 30 seconds then stopped flashing and we couldn’t see it anymore. I could still see it for about 3 seconds after the light went out. I could see the object similarly to the way you can still see brightness from dimming embers. Then we lost track of it and didn’t see it again.