2018-02-24 - Long Beach, CA - Sphere

Rolling Sphere Across Sky

At approximately 18:38 on February 24, 2018, while walking to my apartment, I happened to be looking up at the stars which were nice and bright (for urban Long Beach, anyway) . My attention was drawn to the west by a steady orange light in the sky. It caught my attention because of its orange color and lack of any apparent strobe or beacon that normally would be seen on an aircraft. I caught a brief glance of it as I was walking and then a tree came between me and the light so that I temporarily lost sight of it. When I cleared the tree a second or two later, I noticed that the light was either climbing in altitude, or coming towards me (or both), and that it was a steady orange glow, almost like a landing light on an aircraft but way more orange. I was kind of fixated on this light, expecting at anytime to see a beacon or navigation lights which would have given it away as an aircraft when it started to fade and then disappeared completely. Not behind a clou! d or anything, but just faded out within the span of about a second or two at most. There might have been a second light behind (closer to the horizon) the first light, but, as I stated, I was transfixed on the brightest light, and only noticed a second light that disappeared along with the first light at the same time. That second light might have been an aircraft, as LAX outbound traffic is frequently in that vicinity of the sky, but I can’t be certain as I was only half aware of that light.

Anyway, as I was contemplating what I had just witnessed (I was stopped a few doors down from my apartment at this point, staring up at the sky), an object came “tumbling” by at, what seemed to me, just above treetop-level! It was moving in an easterly direction and, for lack of a better word, tumbling. It remind me of a semi-translucent, roughly spherical object with a very dim, orangey glow. There seemed to be a darker patch on the object that rotated with it’s apparent tumble, this is how I could see it’s rotation. It moved at a steady, quick pace; I’m bad at estimating speed, but I’d say maybe between 20 to 35 mph. It made no noise and was visible to me for approximately 5 to 8 seconds, I’d say. It moved eastward and looked to be descending as it crossed my field of view, but I could be wrong. It had a steady glow, no flickering like a candle or anything. I thought initially that maybe it was a bag with a candle or something in it, but I’ve seen flying lanterns before, and this didn’t look or move like the lanterns I’ve seen in the past. It had been a windy day in Long Beach, but when I saw this object, there was no wind that I could detect.

One other thing--as I was driving home about 10 to 15 minutes before my initial sighting of the original light, I had noticed a couple looking up at the sky rather intently on the sidewalk of the street I was driving down. Now I wish I had stopped and asked them what they were looking at. Maybe it was related to what i saw…