2013-07-29 - Tagbilaran City (Philippines) - Triangle

Lighted, triangular shaped object observed over the Philippine islands.

On the listed date and time, I was drawn to the outside by many dogs barking. Upon going out, I noticed a UFO. I hurried to get my camera and attempted to shoot some video. It was dark and although the object was clearly visible, it did take some time to find it in the camera view finder and then slowly zoom it in to the cameras maximum zoom of 50X. I edited 2 minutes out where I had lost sight of it in the camera lens. I had to find it in the lens (small) and then slowly zoom it in while trying to keep it focused. But I think there is some pretty good footage. Because of the black sky in the background, there is no depth perception. The object was very stable except trying to hold the camera steady and zoomed in to 50X makes it appear shaky. The object was not moving, just the camera.

When I first observed the object, it was at about 45 degrees above the horizon and moving very slowly to the north, northwest at 340 degrees from north. It appeared to either be slowly descending or because of its movement, dipping at the horizon. I would suspect that at the current location, and based on the direction and speed it would have been visible for at least 20 minutes over my house, but I did not see it earlier. It was approx. 2135 hours when I first observed it and watched it for nearly 15 minutes or until about 2150 hrs. when it slowly became blurry behind a tree. I could still see it occasionally through the limbs. I had a strong handheld bright flashlight. When I would attempt to shine it on the object, it would move left or right horizontally for a few degrees as if to get out of the beam of light. Although, the flashlight never illuminated the object.

Distance, altitude and size are hard to judge as there was no reference. I would guess that based on my observations, it was 1-2 km distance and no more than a couple of thousand feet in altitude. If that were correct, I would guess the size to be several meters in diameter. As the object moved away, it would have been continuing out over the sea and over many fishing vessels. I live on an island and there are no aircraft anywhere close at night. I have never seen anything like this before. There are no unexplained objects in the sky here. Actually no objects at all! Although, I have observed satellites before and being a pilot, I know that this did not resemble any aircraft I have seen before.

The object emitted no sound. It appeared triangular and had three steady bright lights. The lights were always on. No flashing. They appeared to be very bright white with a bluish glow around the peripheral. Although the lights appear mostly blue in the video. The actual triangle appeared to be oscillating left to right a few degrees as seen in the video. As the object oscillated, a fourth and fifth light would appear in the back of the object. Giving the impression that they were slightly out of view from me until the object revealed them while oscillating.

All of the lights stayed at an even distance, giving the impression that they were all connected and it was one object. I initially took a little over 6 minutes of video, but later edited out 2 minutes of simply black screen when I was trying to reacquire the object in the view finder. Towards the end of the video, you will notice that the lights get blurry, because of the tree. I stopped filming at this point.