2012-06-22 - Homewood, IL - Cigar

Bright, fast-moving, glowing or flaming object moving south to north approx.10 - 15,000 feet. 'Flames' went out at passed overhead.

I was sitting on my front porch. I noticed, coming from the south at a hign altitue, a glowing light, as if a flame, bu not an aircraft. It was moving quickly. but not a a very high altitude. My estimate is about 10 - 15,00 feet. It was moving quickly, as if a plane at about 35,000+ would move. As it got closer, it was moving directly at me, south to north, as appeared to be a hot-air balloon, but moveing WAY too fat for that. As it moved overhead, it was silent and it looked like a balloon with a flame under it, but very high. I took two pictures with my iPhone, both show a cigar or banana-shaped flame/fire when I look at it close up. As I went through my house to call my wife and look at it out the back (north side), it was no longer bright. It's as if the lights/flame had gone out, but you could still see it's dark shape against the sky. My wife said that it looked like a cigar to her. It did to me at that time, as well. It was still moving ver! y quickly and faded away as it moved north. Being a flight/plane enthusiast, I immediately looked at flight traffic over my area on flightaware.com. For the first time EVEr, it was blank. No flight traffic showed up on either Midway or O'hare airport's radar screen. Now, I have been viewing flightaware.com air traffic for a long time and I have never had a blank screen. Also, all flight traffic from Midway Airport, which had been flying over my house on approach to the airport at the time of the sighting, just stopped. It ended very quickly. No more jets. Very strange. During this entire eposide, there was no sound associated with the object at all.