2012-07-04 - Springfield, OR - Fireball

On July 4 at approx eleven pm I was standing in my back yard when from my right an orange orb or light appeared traveling at a slow speed. It was relatively high in the sky but appeared to be very close to my position and yet I couldn't make out an object associated with the light it was as if it were on fire but there was no flickering nor smoke nor was anything falling from the object. I was completely floored by the sight of it mostly because this was a relatively large size light, about half the size of my thumb at arms length and larger vertically than horizontally and yet no sound could be heard, no flickering of light such as all aircraft I have seen in the sky display and so I couldn't figure out what it was. For a moment I entertained the possiblility it was a meteorite and hoped that if it were one it would drop some material that I could retreive. As I watched this light proceed in a north to south direction I noticed , again to my right, a q! uick movement and looking that direction I saw another light that seemed to swoop (for want of better way to explain how it appeared to fly) into view coming from a north to south direction and immediately to a east west direction and then again to the same apparent direction as the other light. It assumed the same height and speed of the other light and this light was also orange and appeared to be on fire but with no flickering. This object, although seeming to be the same apparent size of the first object was more of a tear-drop shape than the other one and it had a rather spiky appearance to its light. These objects were entirely composed of light from my view of them I could not make out any features.

I was thinking someone else must be able to see these objects, people were out shooting off fireworks and so the chance that someone was looking up at the sky were pretty good --I felt very excited seeing these objects because I've never seen anything like them before and I felt I was seeing a rare sight but by no means did I think I was the only one who could see them. The big dipper was in the north/northwest sky and was setting..these objects were approximately half-way up the dipper or about half way up the sky in my estimation, about the same height a small aircraft would fly and lower than a jet. I have seen loads of aircraft in the skies from my backyard and none have ever had lights as large as these two were, not even a helicopter close in the sky would have that type of light.

The two lights, the second light having moved closer to the first light, continued to move steadily and at the same height in a southerly direction and I watched them looking from one to the other when I noticed the first light I had seen appeared to turn to the west and began to get smaller as if fading out or even burning out? I watched it completely disappear in less than a minute. I looked back to the other light and it too turned and began to fade from sight appearing to be going west directly away from me straight ahead of my orientation. I did not take my eyes off of this one and watched until it appeared to become a tiny white circle such as a star would appear and seemingly to be very far away. And then it too disappeared. I watched for another hour on this clear night with a full moon behind me for anything even vaguely resembling what I saw but did not see any further objects.

I have never seen anything like this before, could these have been some kind of firework?