2016-02-06 - Petaluma, CA - Circle

Dull orange orb over Petaluma, CA, for over five minutes 2/6/2016, a portion of which was a very bright, fiery orange.

While sitting on my sofa watching the Golden State Warriors game against the Thunder, saw a dull orange circular object appear through the window in the southeast. Walked outside to see what it was and this orange orb was slowly moving in a generally southeasterly direction. It had a brighter portion which was about 10% of the total size of the object and that part was slowly rotating in an irregular pattern around and through the object. Grabbed my binoculars out of the car and was able to see clearly that that brighter orange glow rotating continued and in trying to identify it the only thing that it was remotely like was a large balloon with a gondola slung underneath it. In this case though, the gondola was on fire as it was significantly brighter than the rest of the object. But the way this brighter portion was moving was not predictable and did not have an obvious pattern or rhythm to it. The dimmer portion of the orb looked to have a semblance of a grid-like appearance, but when the brighter portion of the glow moved across the face of it, the grid was no longer visible due to the greater intensity of the light.

After about four minutes of relatively slow and consistently paced movement from my right to left, it appeared to turn south and head toward San Francisco roughly. It moved away at a regular pace for several seconds and then appeared to speed up significantly until it became too small to view and then disappeared. The speed of this last part seemed unlike anything that I've seen before, as though the physics I am aware of were no longer operating on this object. The disappearance from view in the last ten seconds essentially happened too fast to be explained by any previous experience I've had. There was no sound involved at all.

This is the first time that I have ever seen, much less reported, anything like this. Until I did a Google search on 'orange object in the night sky over Petaluma tonight,' I was unaware of websites like this. I'm a totally sane person and this was in no way imagined. I'm a professional IT Project Manager and have been in the industry for many years with increasing levels of responsibility. Folks like me are pretty grounded as a rule or would not be able to survive in these kinds of roles for long. Keeping calm under great pressure is a prerequisite for this work.

I've got no idea who reads these entries or what is done with them, but felt that if there is something weird around and others have seen the same thing, maybe it is a good idea to report.


((NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD))