2017-07-05 - Portland, OR - Fireball

Bright orange flickering object observed for 90 seconds flying North to South over Portland, Oregon.

I observed a very strange flying object on July 5th at 1235am (I was so awe struck by the encounter, I immediately noted the time) over Portland, Oregon. The object appeared to be heading in a general North to South direction and it followed, as far as I can tell, a linear path. I originally took note of it because it was very bright. The light was orange in color, looking like a planet might in the early evening sky, though it was even brighter and was about twice the size of what a planet would look like. The light flickered.

I first spotted it at about 30 degrees above the Northern horizon. I thought it was odd because it was so bright. At first I wondered why a plane or helicopter would have such a bright orange light on at that altitude. I live close to a level 1 trauma center so at first I thought that it might be a life flight helicopter flying to the hospital. I’ve seen them with their landing/illumination lights on and they can be quite bright. I couldn't hear a sound and I never did.

I continued to watch it, trying to figure out what it was. As it got closer, I thought I could see a red navigation light.

However, as the object moved overhead and to the west of me, the red light that I thought was a navigation light appeared to actually be a red shaft of light extending downwards from the bottom of the glowing object. I thought this was really odd. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was strange enough to get the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. After the object had passed over my head (maximum height was about 75 degrees), at which point the object was very bright, the object rapidly began to get fainter and fainter until it looked similar to what a satellite would look like flying across the night sky. Then it faded out and disappeared 35-40 degrees above the Southern horizon. Total time of the viewing was between 60-90 seconds.

It was by far the most bizarre thing I have ever seen and I can't for the life of me figure out what it was or even surmise what it may have been. Although I was positive what I had seen was not the ISS, just to check I looked up if the space station was going to make a pass over Portland that night, and I discovered it would be visible over Portland at 4:38am—almost 4 hours after my sighting. I have seen the ISS a number of times and this was much brighter.

I can't for the life of me figure out what it was.