2013-11-16 - Jamestown, RI - Fireball

When outside with our dog around 6:30 pm on Sat., Nov. 16th, I spotted a bright white orange light pulsating somewhat coming above the SW tree line horizon. Its location, seemingly, would have put it over the Atlantic Ocean with the towns of Narragansett and N. Kingston to its left. It was moving the speed of a slow plane, but absent any blinking lights. It almost appeared to be a plane on fire. No trail, however, was evident as such an event might generate.

I watched it go directly overhead on a NE trajectory toward Portsmouth, RI. And it was soundless. A meteor? Too slow. An unmanned flame-driven hot air balloon of some kind? Too fast and steady in its trajectory. There was little wind. And its consistent horizontal path did not suggest a flare of any kind.

Moments later, a second object, similar in size, appeared following the same trajectory. As I watched both recede toward the NE horizon, I called my wife to come outside to see if she could get a glimpse before they disappeared.

Then a third object appeared on the SW horizon, followed, yet again, by a fourth. She could see what had caught my attention. They passed directly overhead, spaced in much the same fashion as the previous two, about fifteen seconds apart (as they emerged over the horizon). And each took about seventy seconds to pass from horizon point to horizon point. And as the others, they were round in shape. The light emanating from all was flame-like white orange...again, with no sound at all. All four moved at a speed and trajectory that did not suggest floating objects. My inability to ascertain the light source made altitude difficult to assess. My best guess: four to eight thousand feet, because one could see a somewhat pronounced, not perfectly symmetrical flame-like flickering, but very bright. But they could have been much higher, given their unfamiliarity. Nothing about these objects suggested a normal aircraft.

We speculated that folks traveling east across the Jamestown Bridge would have had a good view, and my wife elected to call the Jamestown Police. We were curious if anyone else had reported sighting these objects, all of which passed in about an eight-minute time span. The police had received no reports, but sent a young officer to whom we recounted what we had witnessed.