2010-10-22 - Pittsburgh, PA - Sphere

Red/Orange globe with flame tail moving across sky, stopping then reversing direction.

I observed an orange globe or light very high in the sky with an orange tail of the same color. My initial thought was it was a comet or meteor because it was bright and had a flame trailing it. At first it appeared to get closer and was moving horizontally at a slight downward angle then it appeared to just stop with the flame like tail diminishing as it did. Then it began to move completely horizontal across the sky in the opposite direction it was initially traveling. There was a group of people standing there and I wanted to stop to ask if “do you see this?” but they were in the middle of an argument. I called my friend co-worker on the phone, somebody to try to correlate what I was seeing but by the time I completed the call the orange globe slowly started ascending into the twilight sky and disappeared. I was driving and pulled off the road to watch the object. Total time observed was about 2 minutes. The time was exactly 9:24 PM by my cell ph! one history on Friday October 22. Friday night was a clear crisp cloudless evening.

I am a Chief in a branch of Public Safety for the City of Pittsburgh and have never and would never report something like this if I was not absolutely certain that what I saw could be explained away as a manmade object or a natural celestial occurrence. I called the local TV station (WPXI in Pittsburgh) to ask if they had any reports of anything strange in the sky. The person who answered sounded as if I was annoying him so I cut the conversation short leaving no other information.