2009-07-13 - Phoenix, AZ - Cigar

Daylight sighting of a long cigar shaped object that slowly disappears

The object was long and thin, cigar shaped whitish/silver color although more white. This is a rough guess but I would say it's height was somewhere between 2000 and 5000 feet. I first thought it must be a plane as we are in the flight path of a major airport. Started looking for wings, couldn't see any but that's not really unusual because sometimes the angle of the plane makes it impossible to see the wings. Then I realized that the "plane" or "object" was in the wrong place for the flight pattern - too high for just taking off or landing, and too low for passing through. No contrail at all. As I watched the object, which was flying east to west at about 65 degrees above the horizon, it appeared to just simply fade out. I was looking right at it (still looking for the wings on the thing don't ya know) as it slowly dissappeared! The effect was like a plane going behind clouds that are thin at the edges but get thicker towards the middle - I'd say about 8 to 10 seconds from the time it started to fade, to completely gone. But there were no clouds in the sky. I don't know if my eyes were playing tricks, but at the last place I saw the object - the spot where it completely vanished - there appeared a faint dark smudge - like smoke - in an otherwise clear blue sky. It dissapated in a few seconds, making me wonder if I had actually seen the smudge. I continued scanning the sky but saw nothing more.