2012-10-05 - Tulsa, OK - Formation

Armada of Star-like Objects Moving Across Oklahoma Night Sky

At approximately 8:08 central time, my son and I were sitting in our van at the intersection of 129th and 71st in the Broken Arrow, Tulsa area waiting for the light to change. I was driving and we were facing west in the left hand through lane. There was a moderate cloud cover.

While waiting at the stop light my son, who is 17, said something to the effect of, "Dad, what the heck is that/are those?" After a few seconds of confusion in trying to locate what he was looking at in the night sky, I observed what he saw. With due west as the 12 o’clock position, I estimate that a group of objects were at about the 2 o’clock position about 55 to 65 degrees in elevation from the horizon moving from north to south. Speed was difficult to assess because we didn’t know how far away the objects were - although while I was sitting at the light which couldn’t have been more than 20 seconds, they had traversed from the 2 o’clock position to about the 11 o’clock position in the sky as observed through my windshield.

When I first observed the objects I thought they might be fireworks because they seemed to be flickering or pulsing - but then I noted they were moving in unison - although not in a regular formation in the sky. Then I thought maybe they were lighted, radio-controlled aircraft that I had observed in the past in a field near our home. But since I knew these planes moved in a bobbing, irregular manner that did not explain these objects.

When they were at the 11 o’clock position I started counting them before the light changed to green. My recollection was I got up to about a dozen - but my perception was there were even more present - though they were faint. I think they were at least 15 objects and maybe even up to 30 in the position we were observing them. The sky was literally peppered with them in portions of that area of the sky. I perceived the lights to be about the size and brightness of an easily visible star.

The amount of sky they occupied would be approximately equivalent to both of one’s hands - or maybe closer to a hand and a half - covering such a section. The length of the loose formation was greater than its width from what I could see. I perceived the color of the lights to be a light green - although my son thought they were more like neon purple. I thought they were pulsing or blinking in unison at a what I think was a rate of 2-3 pulses per second. Aaron thought this effect was from them passing in and out of the cloud cover.

After the light turned green I caught glimpses of the lights again - although it was difficult to focus on them because I was driving. Aaron saw them more clearly but we were moving so visual confirmation was difficult to maintain for him as well. Light pollution didn’t help either. About a quarter of mile down the road, we turned in behind a school to see if we could still observe the phenomenon but they had apparently disappeared behind the cloud cover or moved too far distant for us to observe them further.

I would estimate the total time of the incident to be about one to two minutes from beginning to end of the observation.

My son is a student at the local high school and an interested skeptic in such phenomenon. I am a 49 year old 27 year teacher who has an admittedly avid interest in the topic of UFOs and although I’ve seen some unusual lights in the sky? None I can’t explain as conventional artificial, meteorological, biological, or astronomical objects - until now. The only conventional explanation I can think of for these object would be a formation of military helicopters. They were definitely not airplanes or jets (moving too slowly), birds (unless pigeons have suddenly evolved luminescence in Oklahoma!), balloons, or meteors.