2011-05-02 - Santa Monica, CA - Formation

Mulitple successive nighttime formations of round unlit objects in V formations at speed.

Returning home at around 9:30 P.M., I unlocked the door to the open deck which leads to my (top) 2nd floor apartment. The deck provides a generous view of the sky, and my gaze was momentarily drawn toward several aircraft transiting nearby. As we are within 2 miles of the local airport, this is not an unusual occurrence. What was unusual was then noticing what at first appeared to be a V formation (the point toward direction of travel) of balloons flying rapidly over my apartment and disappearing beyond the roof-line.

These were round or oblong objects, silent, non-illuminated, but visible because their somewhat matte surfaces reflected ground light. They appeared to be at an elevation of anywhere from 800 to 6000 feet - difficult to judge in the dark night sky, but even at the lower elevation extreme would have been traveling at a velocity considerably in excess of balloons, birds, or even private aircraft. Of course as there were between 12-14 round, discreet objects in this formation, they were clearly not planes and obviously not birds. Passing overhead, the formation was about the size of 4 fingers held at arms length, flying West to East (from the ocean to inland) and they were visible for about 8-10 seconds.

When first spotted at about 60 degrees above the horizon, they appeared to be a rigid, single, solid object with dim evenly-spaced lights defining a 90 degree angle V, but as they came toward my location I realized they were individual objects, some of which suddenly seemed almost to cavort with one another while still maintaining a loose V formation, though at an overall constant velocity.

I quickly moved to a more unobstructed area of my deck, and was rewarded several minutes later by another formation flying in the same West to East corridor over my home. Several more minutes and a third formation. There was no wind at ground level, so I thought if these are balloons then the jet stream must be mighty low.

By the fourth formation, each one of which varied in total size from approximately 9 to 15 objects, the flight path was no longer overhead and was now Northwest to Southeast.

Another 5-8 minutes, and a Southeast to Northwest formation. I realized then that these could not be balloons as they were flying in opposite directions and at quite a good clip. A sixth formation, now after 10 P.M., flew exactly South to North. Some of these had maintained a fairly fixed, evenly spaced ninety degree formation, while others exhibited the peculiar pooling and scattering behavior as they transited in a looser formation.

My conclusion: it was a busy night overhead. What I saw eludes a conventional explanation i.e. birds, balloons, private or commercial aircraft, known military aircraft - hence this report. I don't therefore assume these to be of extraterrestrial provenance, although that remains one possibility. Secret military aircraft? Possible - but that would be a lot of secret aircraft to throw at one relatively small section of sky in such a short period of time over a densely populated area. Not likely. And not likely I'll ever find out.

Now I'm going to bed.