2013-06-27 - Independence, KY - Rectangle

Gigantic lantern moves rapidly across sky in KY!

Shortly after 10 pm tonight from my back porch, I witnessed a very strange object in the sky about a half mile to a mile away and about a half mile up. I screamed for my wife to bring the camera. She had to look for it and just grabbed her phone instead. She took three photos but it took her 30 seconds to get her Iphone5 and by this time the object had moved well away. Initially, the object was close enough to see the periphery, which clearly appeared to be rectangular with a giant white-orange flame inside that filled most of the rectangle shape but the flame did not extend beyond the well-defined rectangular borders. For how bright the light inside the rectangle was, I was surprised to not see much of a halo of light around it.

My first impression was that it was just a large hot air balloon because I heard what I thought was the sound of propane fuel burning. I absolutely did not hear a intermittent propeller type sound. It was definitely more of ! a low steady dull rumble sound. I had a clear view of most of the horizon. The object moved from left to right across it, at first very slowly then amazingly as fast as a jet airplane or faster. It moved all the way across the sky easily in less than one minute. The object also without question was ascending rapidly. It was moving east to southeast in direction in mostly clear skies at the time. The long axis of the rectangle seemed perpendicular to the ground at all times even though the pictures seem otherwise (my wife must have slanted the camera in her rapid response). The pictures revealed almost a figure eight light source. However, in person, the object looked very bright to the naked eye with a giant, uniform flame burning upwards, much like a gigantic lantern in the sky. Any insight into what this object was would be appreciated. I thought hot air balloons just moved at the same speed as the wind.