2012-08-19 - Battle Ground, WA - Teardrop

UFO sightening in Battle Ground Washington on 8/19/12 at 9:45pm.

Last night I was sitting outside, talking on the phone around 9:45 pm, when I noticed this large ball of fire dancing around in the sky at a low altitude. I stared at it for a minute or so, then decided to run inside and grab my husband so he could explain this to me. We live in a neighborhood and have a couple large street pole lights in our neighborhood. We estimated the distance of the flying aircraft to be between 600-1,000 ft above us, and probably an equal distance from us, based on the light poles as a measuring device. This object looked like it was egg/tear dropped shaped it appeared to be about twice as large as the light box on the pole at approx 1,000 feet above us. I don't know how to do the math at a distance like that and be able to provide a rough idea of the size of the aircraft, but that's what it resembled from ground level. It also looked like it was on fire, strange as that sounds, it was a very bright golden/fire color; not a brilliant ! white color. It had several colored lights coming from it. My husband primarily saw red and orange. I saw the full color spectrum in several vertical lines coming from the whole air craft in every direction, in addition to the lights moving horizontally around the aircraft. The primary colors seemed to be Red & Orange. As we watched, it just hovered and moved in circles above us; there was no consistent pattern…it just slowly moved. I have no idea how to guess a speed, but my eyes were able to track it very easily. The lights were very bright and it was a little harder to make out the overall shape of the aircraft at first. There was no noise of an engine or helicopter blades…nothing but silence. We stared at it and watched it move around in a small area of the sky for about 7-10 minutes before it started to drift further South East of us. As it left, heading South East of Battle Ground, it started to climb in altitude and increase its speed. We saw the whole aircraft “bli! nk” a few times at us (maybe 3 or 4) and then it went really f! ast and all the lights disappeared. We kept looking up at the sky to try and see if it would reappear again, but it was gone. Before it left, my husband ran into the garage and grabbed a pair of binoculars to try and get a better understanding of this thing; he was unable to bring the binoculars into focus. We have been discussing this experience since last night and both of us are at a loss for words; especially my husband who retired out of the Air Force recently with 22 years of service. He said he has no idea what that was, he has never seen anything like it. I don’t know if this matters or not, but there was this overall feeling of calmness…I guess I would have expected to be fearful of the unknown, but we were amazingly intrigued by it. When it left, it was almost as though it was saying good-bye with the blinking thing it did. I don’t know though, the experience was strange and I’m not aware of any aircraft that flies that low with no noise. I’m curious if anyone knows what! this is or has also seen something like it? I tried calling the Federal Aviation Administration, but no one answered the phone.