2012-09-25 - Salvo, NC - Formation

Several bright lights in the sky over the Outer Banks

While in the Outer Banks of NC, sitting on an oceanfront balcony, I noticed a large glowing light (at least 500x larger than a star) in the southeast corner of the sky emerge out of nowhere, glow brightly for about 2 seconds, and then disappear. I was the only one to witness this first light and described it to my family, who promptly dismissed it.

However, within minutes, another light appeared somewhat closer this time, which all four of us witnessed. Within one second and immediately next to it, another light appeared at the same time.

Then, a THIRD light appeared and created a row of lights exactly the same, in a straight line. At this point, we were witnessing 5 lights in the sky; the 3 lights then extinguished, and the original 2 followed. This all happened within 5-10 seconds.

Just 2 or 3 minutes later, again, the lights appeared, this time in a different formation - a triangle. They did not all appear at the same time, but within milliseconds of each other, glowed together and at once for about half a second, and then disappeared the same way (millisecond sequence extinguishing).

I attempted to capture some of this on my iPhone video, which I realized was likely futile, but I did get a speck of light to show up.

We recognized that we are in close proximity to several military bases, and several minutes later we did hear faint sounds of jets flying overhead. However, this light phenomenon was like nothing any of us had ever witnessed (and we are regular stargazers).

I should also mention that the folks staying in the house beside us were also on their porch, and the three renters there also witnessed the same thing.

As far as the backgrounds of the observers, 2 are retired travelers, one is a lead scientist in the Research Triangle Area, and the other is a nationally recognized trauma consultant and author.