2013-11-19 - Captiva, FL - Fireball

SIGHTING #30 – 11TH SIGHTING OF ORANGE-RED “FIREBALLS” IN A CLOSE BY STRUCTURED FORMATION

At 7:10 p.m. I arrived at the beach where I regularly skywatch, just north of the rock jetty at Blind Pass, on the south end of Captiva Island, Florida. The sky was slightly overcast and the full moon had not risen yet, so it was quite dark. Since my last sighting late August, I had not been sky watching much since then because of health problems, but nonetheless have been out for short periods of time at least a dozen times since then, and saw nothing of consequence. I was thinking that all of the concentrated action of the past summer was pretty much over until last night.

At 7:15 p.m. one of the :fireballs” came on briefly, due west of me, about 40 degrees up in the sky, and in front of clouds on the horizon. It came on as they usually do, like on a dimmer switch. From when it first showed up until when in went out was about 5 seconds. A few minutes later, another fireball came on in the same fashion, just a bit to the left (south) of the first one. It also went out after about 5 seconds. These lights were a little bit larger than Venus – about the size of a pea at arms length.

Then, about 4 or 5 minutes later, I saw for the first time, a very small orange-red light “freefalling” about ¼ the speed of a falling meteor. I first spotted it at about 60 degrees above the horizon, and it fell to about 35 degrees, and then just stopped and hovered. Then it got very bright, as bright as Venus. It seemed like it was not much more than a mile or so away from me, like the previous. Then it too went out for a few seconds and then came back on. It stayed on and another one came on just to the right of it, about a finger-width away and to the right. Then the second one went out while the first stayed on, and a third one came on just to the right to where the second one went out. After that, the one on the far left and the one on the far right went out for a short second, then came back on, followed by three more lights of the same color and intensity, in a very straight and vertical line, equidistant apart by a pinky finger width, directly below the light! on the right. Then all the lights on the right went out briefly, and then came back on starting at the top, 1,2,3,4 – in a staged way. With the light in the upper left staying on during this time, and the middle top one coming back on briefly, it liked something like a HUGE kind of box structure. This entire event took about 3 minutes, and then all of the lights went out! I would venture an educated guess that the “structure” was perhaps 1 but no more than 2 miles away from me, and around 1,000 to 1,500 feed above the Gulf of Mexico. The whole experience gave me quite a fright both because of it’s size, closeness, and the fact that it was the first UFO activity I seen in my area in over 2 months. I’m excited that they might be coming back!