2012-11-16 - Alto, MI - Light

Three bright orange lights move in formation

I went to look out the window before heading up to bed around 11:50-midnight. It was foggy but there was a crystal clear sky above. Lots of stars visible. But also, above the eastern horizon, above the tree line (25-45 degrees above the horizon I’d guess) was three bright orange/gold lights, like fireballs perhaps or like the golden glow of burning bits from a firework that fall to the ground at the 4th of July. They were, of course, in a triangle formation being three of them but they were configured in a way that appeared as if they were attached to a monstrous jet plane. The lights were brighter than any star in the sky and bigger too. It did not appear to be moving much at first but looked as if it were perhaps coming at us. My husband joined me at the window to see. It turned, all three lights in formation, to the north as if it were a jet banking to land and began to head in that direction. I ran outside to see if I could hear anything but t! here was no sound and by the time I got out there it was fading and I watched the last light trail off to the north until it disappeared/burned out. There was no noticeable flickering, barely a wavering of the light but it faded to a darker gold/brown before disappearing completely as a coal extinguishing slowly. All of the movement was very slow, no sharp turns or sudden acceleration. We thought first of the leonid meteor shower and hoped it was related but neither of us had seen any meteor behave in such a way.