Giant fireball over canal in holiday, Florida
Red/orange, glowing, fireball floating quietly 200-300 ft in the sky. Flying south to north, slowly, and suddenly began flying east, fastly. It looked almost like a giant sky lantern that was burning out of control, but quickly realized it was changing direction and couldn't have been a balloon, there was no wind. My girlfriend and I thought it was a helicopter that was burning out of control, but we didn't hear rotars. We live near tampa and Clearwater airport and see a lot of air traffic, including helicopters, and are used to all types of aircraft sounds. This was flying too low and made no sound whatsoever. Even more interesting, just before we saw the fire all we both saw a very bright star in the Scorpio constellation which began to slowly ascend higher into the sky until it disappeared. I said, "do you see that?" Pointing at the bright star. She yelled, "WHAT IS THAT?!" Pointing at the fireball, which was floating quietly over the canal next to our home. We observed for a total of 1.5 minutes. There were intermittent, fog-like clouds flying by over head. But the fireball was below the fog.
I am a prior service army veteran who was stationed with 1st cavalry division's air cavalry brigade, from 2006-2008, and have much experience with helicopters. The size of the craft, if you extend your hand out and close one eye, was about the size of a quarter.
Red/orange, glowing, fireball floating quietly 200-300 ft in the sky. Flying south to north, slowly, and suddenly began flying east, fastly. It looked almost like a giant sky lantern that was burning out of control, but quickly realized it was changing direction and couldn't have been a balloon, there was no wind. My girlfriend and I thought it was a helicopter that was burning out of control, but we didn't hear rotars. We live near tampa and Clearwater airport and see a lot of air traffic, including helicopters, and are used to all types of aircraft sounds. This was flying too low and made no sound whatsoever. Even more interesting, just before we saw the fire all we both saw a very bright star in the Scorpio constellation which began to slowly ascend higher into the sky until it disappeared. I said, "do you see that?" Pointing at the bright star. She yelled, "WHAT IS THAT?!" Pointing at the fireball, which was floating quietly over the canal next to our home. We observed for a total of 1.5 minutes. There were intermittent, fog-like clouds flying by over head. But the fireball was below the fog.
I am a prior service army veteran who was stationed with 1st cavalry division's air cavalry brigade, from 2006-2008, and have much experience with helicopters. The size of the craft, if you extend your hand out and close one eye, was about the size of a quarter.
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Holiday
USA
1:30 seconds
1:30 seconds
28.19
-82.75
fireball
FL
Occurred : 7/21/2015 22:00 (Entered as : 07/21/15 22:00) Reported: 7/21/2015 7:50:25 PM 19:50 Posted: 7/23/2015 Location: Holiday, FL Shape: Fireball Duration: 1:30 seconds Characteristics: There were lights on the object, There was an aura or haze around the object, The object changed color
Giant fireball over canal in holiday, Florida