2011-01-01 - Doylestown, PA - Fireball

Witnessed approximately 70 flaming balls travel across the eastern sky in a semi circular trajectory.

On the night of January 1, 2011 I picked up my girlfriend from her place of work, off of S. Clinton St. across from the Doylestown train station. The time was approximately 10:25pm EST. We proceeded to drive south on Clinton street making our way towards Hart Ave. While continuing down the hill I noticed numerous bright objects in the eastern sky. It was immediately evident that this was at the least something uncommon or unusual. We made a left turn at Hart ave. and pulled into a parking lot behind a bank. At this point we both exited the vehicle and stood in the parking lot to get a better look. The time at this point must have been about 10:27pm EST.

Initially we saw about twenty of these objects moving relatively slow from south to north across the eastern sky. They were following a semi circular trajectory, appearing out of the dark in the southeastern sky, moving towards our position slightly while continuing north. After covering much the length of the sky, they began gaining altitude and moving away from us before disappearing again into the darkness. They continued in a constant stream like this for about ten minutes, with new ones appearing in the south east as they disappeared to the northeast. For the most part, at any point in time there was somewhere between 15-20 of these in the sky at once. They all followed the same general trajectory but individualy they carried there own paths(almost as though they were travelling in formation and connected by a string). As they made their way across the sky, most of them maintained their relative positions to each other. However some of them were bobbing around. ! They all seemed to maintain a constant speed the entire time. At 10:36 a placed a phone call to mother for her to meet me in town and bring a camera. At about this time the lights started to appear in fewer numbers. Eventually dwindling to about 2 or 3. Finally the last one went across at about 10:40. Of interested note, shortly before the last one went across the sky my girlfriend and I heard the sound of a jet, but did not visualize any planes.

At no point in time did the objects make any type of noise, additionally, they moved unlike any aerial manned objects I have ever seen.

The objects themselves looked like balls of fire. Some were slightly larger and brighter than others. They ranged in color from a deep red to bright yellowish-orange. However all had an appearance similar to that of a campfire at a distance. They almost looked like bioluminescent deep sea creatures moving in the pitch dark of the ocean.

It is difficult for me to judge the altitude of these objects, I can say they appeared to be flying much lower than a typical commercial liner.

Initially when we first exited the vehicle, I freaked out on my girlfriend because she didn't know how to use her crummy camera phone(blackberry), however we did get it working and managed to snap a couple pictures. The pictures by no means do justice to what we saw, and the actual objects appeared much brigher, larger, and in greater numbers.

I have read stories and seen videos of the chinese lanterns, and though they look similar, I stuggle to understand how they would appear/disappear, change color/size, and follow a semi cirular trajectory. I am also unaware of any local group that releases such lanterns.

Additionally, there was some light fog with an overcast sky. It was difficult for me to tell how low the cloud cover was. About 30 minutes after arriving back home it began to rain.