2011-07-04 - Portland, TN - Circle

addition to Orange/Red Orb July 4th 2011

Outside, observing small fireworks that neighbors were firing. Noticed reddish orange circular object that just looked different than airplanes, straight ahead, north of our home, moving south south west.

My dad was a pilot and we watched planes from the time I was very young.

As the object was passing to the west of us, I walked out to the road to get a better view as it moved southwest, thinking we would see blinking lights of an aircraft as it passed us, as many times the blinking lights are not viewable until they pass by at a different vantage point. There were no blinking lights from the three vantage points as it passed.

There was some smoke in the air, so we also assumed that the smoke may have had an effect on the light we were seeing.

The illuminated object remained the same size at all vantage points, about 2 times larger than the bright light of a lowflying aircraft. The light emanating had a shimmery effect. The color was a bright orange red but! again the object had a different shimmery effect, as if there was motion in the light, not clear cut points of light. The other witness described the object as "flying up" into the atmosphere.

The light seemed to fade away as it moved southwest, though it seemed to be much closer to us, lower altitude than the other aircraft that were also in the sky at the time. The other aircraft in the sky were easily viewable, along with their blinking lights, not an orange/red color and seemed to be at higher altitudes than the unknown object.

We were very perplexed because the object was just not the norm and even though it was the 4th of july and their was a bit of smoke in the air, it didn't add up...given us comparing the unknown object with other known objects visable at the same time. Still on my mind, decided to look up other possible reports and my goodness there are many!