2014-01-22 - Lake Panasoffkee, FL - Sphere

Dull white sphere moving slowly but steadily through a clear morning sky. Walked away for about 10 sec. When I returned it was gone.

I went outside to wait for a friend to pick us up to go and work at our church’s food pantry. My wife was still inside at the time. The sky was clear. As I looked to the south I saw an object that I will say looked like a little pure white marble moving horizontally at about 30 degrees above the horizon. At first I thought it was a small airplane but staring at it revealed nothing betraying shape (fuselage, wings, tail)- none of these. It seemed like a round sphere, pure white and not reflecting flashes of sunlight as planes often do, just a dull white color. It moved along at an absolutely steady rate parallel to the horizon. No sound came from it nor was there any trail visible behind it. I watched it proceed smoothly along for about ten to twenty seconds and then ran over to the door and yelled for my wife to come and see. By the time she and I got to the vantage point it had disappeared. I thought immediately, “Ok, cloud cover.” Then I realized, th! e sky was clear. I don’t know if it vanished, flew away, winked out or what. All I know is that in the ten seconds it took me to go to the door, yell and return it had gone. (And it could not have gone into the clouds because there were none.) I have often seen satellites flying overhead at night and this was about the right shape, size and behavior for one of those…so it you can see satellites in the day time maybe it was a satellite. My impression was that whatever this was was flying at about eight to twelve thousand feet at a distance of about one to three miles from my vantage point. I do not feel I can estimate its speed except to say that it was proceeding about as fast as a small plane would. No erratic movement.