2011-12-18 - Sacramento, CA - Cross

Slow moving bright yellow-orange light in plus-sign shape moves west to east to southwest in 20 minutes towards Jupiter.

Around 11:30 p.m. Sunday, 12/18/11 I went to lock the garage door and noticed a bright yellow light due west. I watched it for a couple minutes and it didn't look like it was moving. There is an alley behind our house [which in on an exact east/west alignment] and I moved to place telephone wires between me and the light so I could gauge any movement. It was moving, but very slowly. I ran into the house to get binoculars and tell my husband about the light. The binoculars I grabbed SUCK! And I also wear glasses. But he came out with the larger 10xm binoculars and our little Panasonic camera and a monopod. By the time he came out the light had moved from where I initially spotted it in the west. [It would have been slightly north west from my standing location.] It was moving in a due east direction when I realized it was moving and when I came out from alerting my hubby, it had moved a good hand-span eastward. My husband was taking a 'movie' as well as look! ing through the better binoculars and then the light took a southward turn for a half hand-span and turned southwest at that point. There were spotty clouds in the south and southwest and Jupiter was visible in a large break in those clouds and the yellow light appeared to be maybe going higher, because it seemed to be getting smaller but it was heading for that clearing and Jupiter. My husband said it was appearing smaller because it was entering the cloud cover. He also said it looked like the light was in a plus-sign configuration and that it was more orange than yellow and had panels on it. It was NOT blinking. He thought it might be an 'air-ship'. I said, "what the heck is an air-ship?" and he indicated like a blimp or dirigible, but it was so high and then the plus-sign configuration would sort of cancel that out. Eventually Jupiter was swallowed by the clouds and so was the light. We came back inside and looked up NASA and the local news and nothing was indicated as ! anyone else seeing this light [as of today at 7:30 p.m. there ! has stil l been no posts or news of anyone else seeing this that we can find!] The "movie" he took is sort of like one of those hand-held movies...sort of jerky and blurry at times, but you can clearly see the plus-sign shape and that the lights or panels or whatever are not blinking like an airplane. during the seemingly endlessly slow movement of this whatever it was, there were other airplanes in the sky, both heard and seen. We are within several miles of a small airfield and live near a hospital trauma center with a Lifeflight copter that frequently flies overhead. This light was not like anything I've ever seen before and it was so SLOW. And the odd movement where it was heading in an apparently West to East line and then changed directions to move diagonaly from it's overhead spot towards the southwest was especially confusing.