2013-02-16 - Golden Valley, MN - Light

I saw 3 orange lights slowly gliding through the night sky in the Minneapolis, Minn, area.

On Saturday evening, Feb 16, 2013, I was driving to the grocery store between 9:00 and 9:30 PM. I was not wearing my watch.

It was a cold night, and rather dark (except for street lights and the moon).

A number of airplanes (airliners, I presume) were in the sky, landing or taking off from the MSP airport, located towards the east.

There is no military airport in the area, but Navy Reserve and Air National Guard planes used to be based there (and possibly still are - I don't know). Many decades ago, the Navy based Panther jets and some other planes there, and the ANG based F-89 Scorpions, C-119 Flying Boxcars, T-33s, and some other planes at their side of the airport.

[Note: Some models of the F-89 were capable of carrying the Genie air-to-air nuclear-tipped guided missile. I don't know if our local F-89s were equipped with any Genie's. The Genie went into service in July, 1957. The F-89 is now long obsolete, and the Genie probably is, as well.] The point is that our "civilian" airport has not been purely civilian, over the years, and there's a chance that some of the ANG Scorpions carried nuclear weapons. Not too likely, but possible.

As I proceeded down Noble Avenue, a few blocks from home, I noticed something in the sky in a southeast direction, viewed between obscuring trees. There appeared to be a clump of stars and lights. I noted that if some of them were stars, they were unusually clear and bright - like one would see in the country - not the city.

I vaguely recall that the pattern of stars looked like the Big Dipper, but it could NOT have been the Big Dipper in such a southeast location.

I mention it only because it attracted my attention - not because I think the Big Dipper moved.

Then I noticed that some "extra stars", so to speak, were orange.

I have never seen orange stars before, and doubt that any exist.

Curious, I pulled over as soon as I could (there was no traffic), and viewed the scene between the trees while stopped.

I saw 3 orange lights in an arrowhead shape slowly moving westward - possibly slightly north (west-northwest). For a movement reference point, I used a utility line (probably a cable TV line or phone line), and watched them as they slowly passed over the utility line, with the point of the arrow head leading the way.

There were no red-white-green navigation lights or anti-collision lights visible (strobe lights), nor any flashing red lights on, or near, any of the objects.

I did not hear any noise, as far as I know, but any noise would probably have been drowned out by the several airliners visible in the 25-mile vicinity. (It looked like a busy night for air traffic).

Airline passengers could probably have seen the lights if the plane was northbound or southbound, by looking up and towards the the east (when I saw them).

After perhaps 15 seconds, they disappeared either behind some light clouds or a tree (I don't remember), so I headed to the nearby school parking lot to get a better view, in case they were still visible. Unfortunately, they had vanished, probably behind a large area of broken clouds. I remained there in my car for a few minutes, but never saw them again.

Once I arrived at the grocery store parking lot, about 5 minutes later, I did scan the sky for a while after exiting the car, but just saw the usual broken clouds and the moon. It was very cold, and I didn't stand there for long.

I don't know if the lights were connected to a large object. All I saw were the orange lights, and didn't notice any stars being blacked-out. In terms of observing, the conditions were terrible, but at least I saw the silent, beautiful lights for a little while.

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[NOTE: Peter, the directions on your web page are almost impossible to read. In fact, I could **NOT** read them. They are tiny red letters on a gray background. I had to do a copy-and-paste of the requested date format to a TXT document, and enlarge the letters to read: "Use MM/DD/YY format.."

I guessed at the formats for the other boxes because I couldn't read those tiny red letters, either.

If your webmaster designed the page, he did a TERRIBLE JOB!!!! Making instructions legible is BASIC and ELEMENTARY, and is not ROCKET SCIENCE. You should have him fix it with much larger font and some other color. In fact, you could lighten or eliminate the gray background. It doesn't need to be there. But the gray background could stay if the tiny red letters are junked - as they should be. The black letters stand out well (oddly enough) and are large enough. What was he smoking when he designed it??? I'm running Internet Explorer V8 (IE8) under Windows/XP SP3. The view size is 100%. When I enlarged it to 150% size by using the ZOOM tool, I could STILL hardly read the red letters!! Maybe you would get more reports if people could read the directions...]


((NUFORC Note: I will raise the above issues with our webmaster, but the complaint is only the second we've received in many years. PD))