2016-11-05 - Kingman, AZ - Unknown

Witessed what appeared to be 2 satellites in tandem--then later--odd grouping of flickering lights

Two incidents-same night 5 Nov 2016 beginning approx. 1855hrs (PST) I was sitting in my driveway, with a (roughly) 1/3 moon in the south western sky at around 45 degrees in the sky, which was/is quite clear and free of clouds.

Many nights, I sit out looking at the stars, moon and planets—I’ve been doing this for decades (I am 53). In the past year I acquired a good pair of binoculars, Zeiss 15x60 that are excellent for observing. I was curious if I would witness any meteors tonight, so I had the binoculars hanging from my neck, was leaning back, just letting my eyes adjust to the dark. I had my eyes closed for brief a few moments, maybe a minute to give them a rest—when I opened them I was looking up at about 80 degrees, looking south when I saw what I automatically assumed was a satellite (a common sight at night—I have seen as many as 6-9 in a couple hours.) This time was different—it was not one, but two—that seemed to be moving in tandem. The one further west was ahead by a few degrees, but there were certainly two, traveling together. I raised the binoculars to look for any possible detail that might identify them as just high flying aircraft. I observed no flashing lights, just somewhat steady, white light, that faded as the hurriedly traveled southwest-toward and past where the moon was in the sky.

This was the first time I’ve witnessed two, so I rationalized this may have been two very, very high and fast moving military aircraft (I discounted any idea that these were civilian aircraft)—that would be illogical to assume they were civilian as civilian aircraft are nearly always commercial in nature, and fly to make money.

2nd incident Roughly 30 minutes later I was sitting in the same spot just outside my garage door facing south. I was looking directly overhead into the dark sky looking for a satellite to pass. At 1925 hrs (PST) I observed a faint moving light, extremely high in the sky that I identified as a satellite moving directly south. I brought my binoculars to bear on the object and observed it moving rapidly, the field of stars in the background clearly visible.

I did this for maybe 10 seconds and as it passed through a field of stars I noticed what first appeared to be flickering lights/stars just to the east by maybe 1 degree. I stopped following the satellite as that appeared fairly routine but focused on the flickering lights. What struck me was these lights were not moving quickly—they in fact appeared stationary in the sky (as compared to surrounding stars)—I have seen countless aircraft at night—they are easy to identify—usually almost always you can see 2-3 lights, 1 green, 1 red on either wingtip—sometimes if low enough you can see steady lights from the fuselage-this group of lights—flickering faintly, appeared to not fit this pattern at all.

I kept watching the group of lights for well over a minute—they did move—slightly, and slowly—but there was no uniformity or consistency to it. I compared it to what you witness when you see artillery or even lighting far in the distance. No sound, random sudden brightness with no real pattern-purely random. Like I say, the light “pattern” moved but was very high, much higher than I am used to seeing flying aircraft-and as mentioned aircraft lights flicker or blink as well as appear steady as they move across the sky. On a clear night you can even see contrails—none of this applied to these ‘lights’. I even remarked to myself that it appeared to be a moving battle---but in the atmosphere. Very high up in the atmosphere.

((ADDENDUM FROM WITNESS))

Hello Mr. Davenport—I was reading your announcement on the NUFORC website about looking out for hoaxes etc—just wanted to clarify that mine was not. My sighting/report was from 4 Nov out of Kingman AZ. I just didn’t feel like an interview-but it was legit—and actually surprising, as I was just casually observing that night through my binoculars, and was simply surprised at what I saw.

((END ADDENDUM))