2019-07-14 - Avon, OH - Cigar

Silent cigar-shaped object flying over Avon, Ohio

At approximately 7:45 pm EDT on the evening of July 14, 2019, my wife and I observed a white or dull silver cigar-shaped object move steadily through the sky in a roughly easterly or ENE direction. Remarkably, it had no visible wings, tail, or engines; was producing no contrail; and was utterly silent. By contrast, several ordinary commercial jets that we observed just before or after this object – were all readily audible (even when apparently farther away), had plainly visible wings and engines, and were leaving prominent contrails. Birds that we observed flying overhead at the time had obvious heads and flapping wings, again in contrast to the object in question.

If the object was the size of a medium-sized commercial airliner (hard to tell), I would estimate its distance as about two to three miles away. The weather was clear, the sky blue with a few high cirrus patches, and visibility essentially unlimited. The sun was still brilliantly illuminating everything in the sky, since it was more than an hour before sunset.

I was viewing the object with binoculars, while my wife was viewing it directly without optical aid after I brought it to her attention. Our sighting lasted roughly 30 seconds, from the time I first noticed it in my binoculars while idly scanning the sky until it moved out of sight to the northeast. The object did not noticeably vary its speed or direction at any point during the sighting. It appeared to have small dark markings at its rear and along part of the bottom. It did not look fuzzy but had distinct outlines.

The sighting overall was completely unremarkable except for the absence of any sound, contrails, or visible wings or engines. I was left wondering whether it might possibly have been a small private jet with unusually quiet engines, flying banked so that its wings were edge-on to our perspective (and hence not observable by us), but several considerations argue against that hypothesis. First, we should have heard engines, no matter how quiet, at its modest apparent distance and compared with other aircraft in the vicinity just before and after our sighting. Second, it is extremely unlikely that a normal aircraft would have maintained a bank of about 30 degrees (which is what would have been required to put any wings edge-on to us, given its height in the sky from our position) continuously for half a minute in what appeared to be essentially straight and level flight. Third, if an aircraft had been flying past in an attitude such that its wings were edge-on to us, its tail (vertical stabilizer) would have been plainly visible, contrary to what we observed. Fourth, as noted above, conventional jets that we observed at approximately the same time were all leaving obvious contrails. So, in conclusion, I do not know what we saw, but I’m contributing it to the database in case the information is useful.