2017-07-20 - Cumberland, RI - Flash

Sitting on the front porch, at 4:35am, perfectly clear sky and still dark outside. We were looking at the sky and watching a plane/jet getting closer into view. We spend many hours on our front porch watching planes, birds, etc. We were waiting to see if this plane was going to make a turn towards Green airport or go over our house towards Logan airport.

We see many planes (commercial flights, small planes, helicopters) day and night because it is a much used flight path and our view is perfect. Most planes make a turn towards T.F. Green and a few go over our house and head towards Logan Airport.

At that point there was a bright flash of light much closer to us than the plane we were watching. There were a total of 4 flashes each 1 second apart, the sighting lasted only 4 seconds then it was out of our area of sight.

The flashes stayed in a straight line across the sky. The 1st bright flash of white light got our attention. The 2nd flash, one second later appeared in the sky an impossible distance from the first flash, and so on for the 3rd and 4th flashes.

The distance traveled in the one second between flashes is impossible to get our minds around. We did not see an actual object creating the flashes. In between the flashes of light there was no object visible in the sky. Almost like it was invisible except for the bright white flashes. The time and distance were the same each time. One second with a "measured giant jump" each 1 second apart traveling in a straight horizontal line. It took only 4 flashes and 4 seconds to cover the entire horizon within our view. As opposed to the planes we see daily, which take about 1.5 to 2 minutes to travel the same distance.

Luckily we were both watching the plane before the flash of light, so we saw the sighting together. We were both a bit stunned and puzzled and after those 4 seconds, looked at each other and said, "Hey did you see that too?" We're thankful we saw this together.