White light in sky makes looping patterns, then fades to orange and flies around 30 miles in 30 seconds.
On a brisk clear February evening a friend and I went for an evening walk on Leckhampton hill (900ft) in Cheltenham, England. It was a short time after about 5pm so was getting dark, but it was a cold clear dusk with hardly a cloud.
From where we were stood you can look north to the Malvern hills (1,400 ft) in Worcestershire, which are around 30 miles away from where we were.
The first thing I noticed as we were looking out towards the row of hills was a white spherical light appear in the sky, above and to the right of the hills. I watched it "switch on", or appear suddenly, and my first reaction was to think a plane has just switched it's lights on as it was getting dark. (I have since spoken to other people and for several reasons I don't think this makes sense with being a plane.) At first, as I thought it was a plane, I didn't pay it much attention and continued talking to my friend for around 30 seconds until we both suddenly noticed it had moved up above the Malvern hills into the sky and started randomly looping and smoothly accelerating and decelerating in quite large circular patterns. After about 20 seconds of this it went up higher directly over the hills, and as it did so over about 5 seconds it faded from it's previous white light colour to a more gold colour and then into a definate orange, and was still making smooth looping patterns at various speeds above the hills.
It then proceeded to travel down in front of the hills, and was a fierce orange colour, very close to that of the average British street lamp. Because of the time of day and the season, the hills and most of the land was black with darkness, with a pale blue/whiteish sky behind and the orange light traveled down in front of the hills then in a diagonal direction (south-east-east as we were looking north-west) and traveled in a relatively straight line at a moderate steady speed until it merged in with the lights of Gloucester city centre and we could no longer see it. Gloucester is around 10 miles from where we were stood, and the Malvern hills where the light was sighted is 30 miles. The whole sighting was probably around a minute and a half. The first minute being the light above the range of hills and it then took about 30 seconds to travel from Great Malvern over to Gloucester meaning a speed of about a mile a second.
My friend and I relayed back to one another the events several times and both agree on what we saw.
((NUFORC Note: Source of report indicates that the date of the incident is approximate. PD))
On a brisk clear February evening a friend and I went for an evening walk on Leckhampton hill (900ft) in Cheltenham, England. It was a short time after about 5pm so was getting dark, but it was a cold clear dusk with hardly a cloud.
From where we were stood you can look north to the Malvern hills (1,400 ft) in Worcestershire, which are around 30 miles away from where we were.
The first thing I noticed as we were looking out towards the row of hills was a white spherical light appear in the sky, above and to the right of the hills. I watched it "switch on", or appear suddenly, and my first reaction was to think a plane has just switched it's lights on as it was getting dark. (I have since spoken to other people and for several reasons I don't think this makes sense with being a plane.) At first, as I thought it was a plane, I didn't pay it much attention and continued talking to my friend for around 30 seconds until we both suddenly noticed it had moved up above the Malvern hills into the sky and started randomly looping and smoothly accelerating and decelerating in quite large circular patterns. After about 20 seconds of this it went up higher directly over the hills, and as it did so over about 5 seconds it faded from it's previous white light colour to a more gold colour and then into a definate orange, and was still making smooth looping patterns at various speeds above the hills.
It then proceeded to travel down in front of the hills, and was a fierce orange colour, very close to that of the average British street lamp. Because of the time of day and the season, the hills and most of the land was black with darkness, with a pale blue/whiteish sky behind and the orange light traveled down in front of the hills then in a diagonal direction (south-east-east as we were looking north-west) and traveled in a relatively straight line at a moderate steady speed until it merged in with the lights of Gloucester city centre and we could no longer see it. Gloucester is around 10 miles from where we were stood, and the Malvern hills where the light was sighted is 30 miles. The whole sighting was probably around a minute and a half. The first minute being the light above the range of hills and it then took about 30 seconds to travel from Great Malvern over to Gloucester meaning a speed of about a mile a second.
My friend and I relayed back to one another the events several times and both agree on what we saw.
((NUFORC Note: Source of report indicates that the date of the incident is approximate. PD))
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Cheltenham (UK/England)
United Kingdom
90 seconds
90 seconds
light
Occurred : 1/2/2013 17:00 (Entered as : 01/02/2013 17:00) Reported: 5/14/2014 9:10:24 AM 09:10 Posted: 6/4/2014 Location: Cheltenham (UK/England), Shape: Light Duration: 90 seconds Characteristics: The object changed color
White light in sky makes looping patterns, then fades to orange and flies around 30 miles in 30 seconds.