2019-09-24 - Shelton, CT - Light

Ball of flashing red/gree/white lights observed moving for 20-30 minutes

My location: 41*17’60”N - 17*11’26”W, elevation 390 ASL. Object was observed at 49* NE from this location at an elevation of about 20* above horizon. No clouds, clear night with many bright stars. (*) means degrees.

At about 10:00pm, I stepped out my back door. With the naked eye, I observed what I thought was an aircraft practicing stalls at night. Being a former glider pilot and life long aviation enthusiast, I am familiar with aircraft at night. I also have a steady stream of aircraft overhead leaving JFK and heading across in the Atlantic flight corridor. I could see red, green/blue and white lights and thought these to be the port/starboard/landing lights of an aircraft. The lights were clustered together and blinking rapidly. Imagine those colored LEDs blinking quickly on a wreath but this was in the shape of a tight ball. As I continued to watch the lights slowly swoop up and down through a space of 1.0 to 1.5 degrees of sky, (using fingers,) I realized that the lights were wrong for an aircraft. I observed perhaps 8-12 swoops. Each swoop was in a slightly different direction in the sky, some to the left, others to the right. Each swoop was a duration of 4-5 one thousand from top! to bottom. I had excellent reference for elevation changes as the event occurred between two stationary trees with horizontal branches.

After observing for perhaps 10 minutes or more, I went in and grabbed my binoculars (Bushnell 16x50) and returned outside. I moved my observation position 4 feet right to gain a clear, unobstructed view without branches but still between two trees on either side of the object. Standing and observing hand held was shaky so I kneeled down behind an Adirondack chair to steady the image. I could now see much more clearly the small cluster of multiple colored lights. My focal setting was not set to infinity. Thinking the different colors could be a refraction of white light in the lenses, I moved and observed stars and they were distinctly a single, steady source of white light compared to the colored lights of the object. I thought to try and photograph the object with my smart phone but shooting stars at night with the phone is pointless.

As I continued to observe the object through the binoculars, the swooping had noticeably slowed and diminished. I also noticed the cluster seemed smaller than when I first started, as if it was moving away but still remained in the same altitude position relative to the trees. As I had been observing the object for about 10-15 minutes, my knees were sore from kneeling on the stone pavers. I left the object, still visible with naked eye but smaller in the sky and went to bed wondering what the ‘ell I just saw….