2010-08-21 - Morris, IL - Fireball

four fireballs moving rapidly south at 9:45pm CST west of Chicago

First, I wish it to be known that Morris Municipal Airport (http://www.airnav.com/airport/C09) is 2.8 miles due north of our location. It is a very small airport that does not handle large aircraft or carrier lines.

At roughly 9:45pm CST my wife and I were in our front yard. We were walking past the front of our house passing south when we saw two odd shapes in the sky, quickly followed by one, then another.

My best description is that all four shapes were identical, and looked like fireballs, each of which cast a tail of radiation in its wake that made each object look vaguely like a glove with the fireball at the palm and the fingers (four or five) trailing in the wake (my wife saw something very similar, but not in as much detail). They were orange-yellow, about the shade of fire you'd see from a campfire.

I have no way of gauging their size nor distance from the earth's surface, except to say that 5 or 6 of them grouped together would have been enough to blot out the moon from our view.

We initially saw one of the shapes moving directly overhead, due south. Then another shape seemed to appear directly overhead (or simply fly into our field of vision), then another. At around the same time we observed the third shape overhead, we realized there was another such shape further off in the southern sky.

All four shapes continued rapidly due south until they disappeared from our sight. They did not disappear over a horizon, nor were they obstructed by trees or buildings, but rather they seemed to fly straight off into the sky until they became too small to see.

We initially thought they may be skydivers, but couldn't explain the intense fire. We also thought they might be hot air balloons, but we both concluded they were moving fast enough that we couldn't hope to catch them in our truck, even if we drove rapidly in a straight line after them. We heard no sound from them whatsoever.