Two clearly visible, internally lighted spheres, flying in formation toward New Orleans
On New Year's eve, 2009, at about 21:00, I went out to my back deck to watch the fireworks going off around our neighborhood. Looking straight up, I thought I was looking at some strange new form of fieworks over my house. However, I soon realized these objects were too high up and too large to be fireworks.
What I saw was two large internally lighted spheres traveling in a northeast to southwest direction toward New Orleans from Slidell where I live. They were identical spheres traveling at about 50-60 mph, in a perfectly parallel course at the same altitude and speed. Their altitude appeared to be about 1000 to 1200 feet and they were about the size of a small house or about 75 feet in diameter. The wind was virtually calm and there was a broken low overcast cloud cover.
The spheres appeared to be made of translucent glass or ceramic material which appeared glowed pink over-all with uneven blue and gray horizontal bands around them. They glowed from within and were clearly visible for about three minutes before disappearing into a low hanging cloud bank. The strangest characteristic was that they had a collar around the bottom of the spheres which was emitting yellow flames in a downward direction which bent back away from the direction of travel. Looking up into them was like looking into an upside down can of burning Sterno, but much bigger. The flames were too big to be a hot air balloon and would have set a balloon on fire because they were also deflected up the sides of the objects by their speed of travel. They were also going too fast, and at too constant a speed and altitude, to have been ballons.
There were no navigation lights, beams, or other forms of illumination visible. They glowed with a soft glow from inside them which made them clearly visible in the night sky. There were no visible windows or other openings to be seen.
They appeared to possibly have been man-made robotic craft of some sort, but I know of no craft with these characteristics that could possibly fly in the manner of these two spheres. For this reason I have to classify them as unidentified flying objects.
I am a retired college instructor and former private pilot familiar with many forms of aircraft, but I have never seen any like this.
On New Year's eve, 2009, at about 21:00, I went out to my back deck to watch the fireworks going off around our neighborhood. Looking straight up, I thought I was looking at some strange new form of fieworks over my house. However, I soon realized these objects were too high up and too large to be fireworks.
What I saw was two large internally lighted spheres traveling in a northeast to southwest direction toward New Orleans from Slidell where I live. They were identical spheres traveling at about 50-60 mph, in a perfectly parallel course at the same altitude and speed. Their altitude appeared to be about 1000 to 1200 feet and they were about the size of a small house or about 75 feet in diameter. The wind was virtually calm and there was a broken low overcast cloud cover.
The spheres appeared to be made of translucent glass or ceramic material which appeared glowed pink over-all with uneven blue and gray horizontal bands around them. They glowed from within and were clearly visible for about three minutes before disappearing into a low hanging cloud bank. The strangest characteristic was that they had a collar around the bottom of the spheres which was emitting yellow flames in a downward direction which bent back away from the direction of travel. Looking up into them was like looking into an upside down can of burning Sterno, but much bigger. The flames were too big to be a hot air balloon and would have set a balloon on fire because they were also deflected up the sides of the objects by their speed of travel. They were also going too fast, and at too constant a speed and altitude, to have been ballons.
There were no navigation lights, beams, or other forms of illumination visible. They glowed with a soft glow from inside them which made them clearly visible in the night sky. There were no visible windows or other openings to be seen.
They appeared to possibly have been man-made robotic craft of some sort, but I know of no craft with these characteristics that could possibly fly in the manner of these two spheres. For this reason I have to classify them as unidentified flying objects.
I am a retired college instructor and former private pilot familiar with many forms of aircraft, but I have never seen any like this.
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Slidell
USA
3 minutes
3 minutes
30.29
-89.81
sphere
LA
Occurred : 12/31/2009 21:00 (Entered as : 12/31/09 21:00) Reported: 8/27/2010 3:55:49 PM 15:55 Posted: 8/30/2010 Location: Slidell, LA Shape: Sphere Duration: 3 minutes
Two clearly visible, internally lighted spheres, flying in formation toward New Orleans