2014-11-07 - Isle of Palm, SC - Changing

4-6 bright orange lights floating low over the ocean horizon on Isle of Palms

My husband and I noticed some extremely bright, low-flying orange lights over the ocean while looking out the balcony of a rented condo in Isle of Palms. The first 3 appeared together and seemed to be floating fairly quickly along the coast. The moon was extremely bright and far above the lights but they appeared much brighter than any stars or planets in the sky.

What was strange was 1. For being so close to the ground and so near us, there was no sound of an airplane or helicopter engine. 2. The lights were unusually bright and very orange -almost like flames. 3. They did not blink steadily like commercial planes- in fact, they did not blink at all. 4. The first set moved quickly along the coast and seemed to move out to sea before fading and disappearing one by one over about 5 minutes. 5. We thought they might be those luminaries that people sometimes release blowing in the wind, but one of them in the second set remained stationary for several minutes. 6. The last one remained stationary for a while. It was very close to the horizon. We concluded it must be Jupiter and took put the star map app on the iPad to check. By the time we got it calibrated, the "stationary" object had floated upwards before going out like a flame burning out.