2017-07-20 - Birmingham, AL - Formation

Twinkling amber lights in formation

My fiancé and I were traveling home in my vehicle after grocery shopping. He suddenly said, "Look up!" as he leaned forward over the steering wheel. When I leaned forward and looked up I saw what I estimated to be a dozen or so twinkling/blinking/phasing objects flying in a close V-formation.

He pulled over immediately, and I turned on my phone's camera to record video. (Due to technical error on my part, I missed recording most of the sighting.) Initially, they were overhead. I had difficulty understanding what I was seeing, as the twinkling was disorienting, especially that if one blinked out completely, it might reappear elsewhere suddenly. They did not maintain formation for very long, due to the leap-frog-like blinking in and out. (The objects both twinkled and blinked out completely.) The color of the lights/ objects was a light amber color. There was no sound beyond traffic (we were near an interstate on-ramp). The shape was basically spherical. The twinkling sometimes gave the hint of an egg-shape, but I believe that to be an optical illusion.

I witnessed the objects seeming to disappear and reappear from the V-formation, some of them failing to reappear. They were moving from the western suburbs of Birmingham toward the city of Birmingham. Eventually, the lights were either too far away to see or they had just disappeared. I was able to get a fairly poor quality video (33 seconds of one or two of them in the distance) that demonstrates the "twinkling." Sometimes the lights moved toward their destination before blinking out. That's how I was able to comprehend they were reappearing elsewhere after they blinked out.

My fiancé said he did not see as many ibjects as I did. He saw about half as many, but he was driving in traffic, and I was completely focused on the sighting from the moment he pointed out lights in the sky.

The objects were flying far too close together to be any manned craft of which I am aware. Initially, I had assumed it was military exercise, then I thought it was helicopters. Logically, it could not have been helicopters. Not only was the light-color wrong for any aircraft I've seen, but - beyond Blue Angels, I've never seen aircraft fly so closely in formation.

The number of lights dwindled to two, then one, and I lost sight. I didn't get the impression that they were moving especially fast, but I don't know how low they were flying. I had an overwhelming sense of disorientation which certainly contributed to guessing at their altitude. They flew over radio towers, but before I saw that, I would have said they were flying very low overhead.

To be clear, it was dark and I saw no physical objects beyond the lights. I have spoken about them assuming that the twinkling was somehow a part of a physical object. I can't conceive of how the twinkling wouldn't be attatched to a physical object of some sort.