Object above contrails (+30,000) changing shape and traveling slowly East, North-East to and over Las Vegas.
At approximately 10:15 hours, Pacific time on 10/27/2018 while camping on the Jean Dry Lake Bed in Sloan NV (just outside of Las Vegas) I was watching the air traffic to and from LAS. I noticed a bright, seemingly stationary ball which appeared to be at or above the 30,000' mark (over the contrails of passing jets)
I grabbed my Nikon D5200 DSLR with a 200mm lens and took ~200 photos in both .jpeg and .nef. The object, to the naked eye, appeared spherical. However, upon reviewing the images, it seemed to change shape from spherical to that of a cylinder with 3 to 4 separate sections, to that of a boomerang shape. The object was traveling East - North East towards southern Las Vegas. Apparently, NWS launched a weather balloon at 0851 hours - however, this was an hour later, and the object was traveling towards Henderson, not away from it. I and another adult observed the object for approximately 10 minutes until it gained altitude and was no longer visible. I have 186 .nef photos of the object.
((NUFORC Note: We have looked at several of the high-quality photos, and we do not know for sure what the object is
At approximately 10:15 hours, Pacific time on 10/27/2018 while camping on the Jean Dry Lake Bed in Sloan NV (just outside of Las Vegas) I was watching the air traffic to and from LAS. I noticed a bright, seemingly stationary ball which appeared to be at or above the 30,000' mark (over the contrails of passing jets)
I grabbed my Nikon D5200 DSLR with a 200mm lens and took ~200 photos in both .jpeg and .nef. The object, to the naked eye, appeared spherical. However, upon reviewing the images, it seemed to change shape from spherical to that of a cylinder with 3 to 4 separate sections, to that of a boomerang shape. The object was traveling East - North East towards southern Las Vegas. Apparently, NWS launched a weather balloon at 0851 hours - however, this was an hour later, and the object was traveling towards Henderson, not away from it. I and another adult observed the object for approximately 10 minutes until it gained altitude and was no longer visible. I have 186 .nef photos of the object.
((NUFORC Note: We have looked at several of the high-quality photos, and we do not know for sure what the object is
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Sloan
USA
15 minutes
15 minutes
35.93
-115.21
changing
NV
Occurred : 10/27/2018 10:15 (Entered as : 10/27/2018 10:15) Reported: 10/27/2018 6:20:19 PM 18:20 Posted: 11/9/2018 Location: Sloan, NV Shape: Changing Duration: 15 minutes Characteristics: There were aircraft in the vicinity or aircraft chasing the object
Object above contrails (+30,000) changing shape and traveling slowly ENE to/over Las Vegas. ((NUFORC Note: High-altitude balloon? PD))