2013-07-04 - Castle Pines, CO - Triangle

3 bright white lights in triangular shape seen over Denver

I am the person who called the hotline from Castle Rock, CO. My niece, her husband and myself on night of July 4th observed strange lights in the sky. First noticed a “diffused” area of light kind of in a bar shape. My niece’s husband saw it first and thought it was headlights on a mountain side. They had just moved in with us and he was not familiar with direction, the mountains where far to the west of the lights we were looking at. When I noticed it I immediately thought it looked out of place went inside to get binoculars. Upon looking through it at binoculars the object had changed from my initial observation, it was now three bright lights in a triangle shape. I would compare the brightness to a commercial jet landing light. I handed the binoculars to my niece’s husband so he could see; he then handed back to me and as I was looking one of the lights went out leaving two lights. Shortly thereafter another light went out leaving only one light.! The lights where stationary or moving very slowly to the north away from us. The lights varied in brightness over the course of the observation. We observed the lights from approximately 12500 block south and 8000 block east, approximately 15 miles south-southeast of downtown Denver. We were on top of Surrey Ridge in the Daniels Gate subdivision of Castle Pines were we have a complete view of the city. Lights where straight north of our location, I would estimate just east of downtown or to the northeast of downtown. If I made an educated guess I would say they where over Brighton, CO. After looking through the binoculars for the second time I handed them to my niece so she could see them. I then went up to our loft where I have a spotting scope (Celestron Ultima 80) to see if I could make out any detail. The one light still looked as a single light I could not make out anything additional. Object was still nearly stationary. I did notice in the field of view co! mmercial jets flying past (heading towards landing at DIA) and! a helic opter. However I noticed another group of lights to the west or left of the bright light. These lights where much dimmer and varied in color, I would guess there were 6-12 lights, hard to say exact number because they where flashing off and on. This object was also stationary. Total length of observation was approximately 15-20 minutes at which time the lights disappeared. Time was about 9:30-9:50pm mountain time. I went back down stairs and looked through binochlers some more to see if I could locate objects, I did pick up the flashing colored lights and they were now northeast of our location.