2010-03-18 - Ashtabula, OH - Unknown

Bright object observed in the morning sky until it suddenly disappeared

Me and my friend were at Walnut Beach in Ashtabula, Ohio sky watching. We noticed a bright object in the early morning sky. We focused my video camera on it, we then centered the object on the video cameras screen, then paid no attention to it. We then talked about what we had seen earlier that night over the lake, then turned back to the camera, and noticed that the object had moved. We continued to observe the object until it suddenly disappeared.

We thought that the object could have been a star, or planet at first but quickly realized that the earth simply doesn't rotate fast enough to account for how far the object progressed across the sky, and even if it were a star or planet the path it would have followed across the sky would have been entirely different.

We then thought about the idea of the object being a aircraft, however I did not see any anti-collision, landing lights, navigation lights, or wing lights that were blinking at a timed interval on this object. The object appeared to be pulsating with no predetermined order, and flashing an array of colors.

I further concluded that the object could not have been a aircraft because the object was on a eastern heading towards the rising sun so with that being said after the objects lights went off, the sunlight would have reflected off of the aircrafts fuselage still allowing it to be visible.

I am former Air Force, and I have been around a lot of different airframes. I've seen many different aircraft in the sky, and I can identify all of the airframes the USAF currently has in service, along with a good portion of those in the civilian sector on sight. However this object doesn't appear to be any airframe I am familiar with. Let alone the object was traveling at a extremely low airspeed, which in most cases the majority of aircraft would have a very hard time trying to stay airborne at such a speed. Not to mention the object was either in or extremely close to the NO FLY ZONE located around the Perry Nuclear Power Plant near Madison, Ohio.

I eventually lost sight of the object when it suddenly disappeared from sight. I saw it disappear with my own eyes, an my friend saw it disappear on camera. We managed to capture the object disappearing on tape and we analyzed it frame by frame the best we could. I will be posting the videos link and the images link for the frame by frame breakdown below so you can see what we witnessed for yourself.

Video link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAPdTd7oZqk

Frame by frame breakdown:

http://s773.photobucket.com/albums/yy20/robertg87/

Equipment: JVC Everio with tripod Any advice, comments, ideas, or information as to what this object might be would be greatly appreciated.

I am intrigued by this object and would love to have this footage analyzed but I have no idea on how to go about doing that.

Thanks