2013-08-02 - Oxford, OH - Light

5 amber lights traveling east over Oxford OH

My wife and I counted a total of 5 objects traveling overhead at various intervals over approximately a 5 minute period. All were traveling in a straight line east, taking 20-30 seconds to go from overhead to the horizon.

They were vaguely round amber lights. All identical. No shape was discernible. I had a good pair of binoculars and followed #5 for nearly 30 seconds without being able to make out a source of this light or any recognizable shape of the light. The lights did not flash or blink, and we heard nothing but the crickets. They sometimes flickered near the horizon as they went through cloud cover.

The first two flew very close to each other. In fact, our impression was that they were the leading and tailing light of an airplane, since the second flowed closely behind the first (though as I said the color was wrong, and they were not blinking). We were left perplexed, because while the speed and brightness suggested a low-flying aircraft, we should have heard it at that height.

The other three lights were distinctly singular. They did not apparently follow the same exact flight path as the first two, but did fly west to east. The third came less than a minute later. The last 2 came separately 2 or 3 minutes later. All flew at a fairly uniform, constant speed.

It was night, but no stars were visible because of clouds. The source of the light was not very diffuse, so it may have been near the bottom edge of the clouds.

I am a Visiting Professor of Sociology at a large University. My wife works at a bank. We and I are birders, so we recognize many of the ways people’s impression and memory of objects can be confused. We have practiced methods we use to accurately describe and remember features of things we see (for example we describe objects we see out loud and verify them with one another as we’re seeing them). I went inside to write down this description immediately thereafter.