2020-05-17 - Kennewick, WA - Sphere

Silent Red pulsing sphere moved from the south toward us then moved west until view was blocked by a structure after two minutes.

On Sunday May 17, 2020 at 9:53 pm, I saw a red sphere in the sky. It was silent, and the red sphere light seemed to pulse. It moved westerly and my visual ended when it went below the roofline of the shop in my neighbors’ backyard. Initially I thought it was the planet Mars, just particularly brilliant. But when I realized it was not stationary, I snapped a quick photo and then returned to the house to get my husband. We both returned to the backyard and it was moving and seemed closer to us and moved westerly. It appeared to have a whitish haze around the sphere that emanated about two times as wide (also circular habit seemed dimmer on the upper left side) as the red pulsing sphere and the aura lasted only a few seconds, then it returned to a solid pulsing red color (my husband saw it pulsing red and blue). I’m not even sure if I would call it solid. It soon was starting to go behind the large silver maple tree in my neighbors’ backyard so I walked! about 40 feet south so I could continue to keep a visual on it. I was able to capture several short videos on my iPhone and then it appeared to turn southerly and seemed to be moving away from us moving in a southwest direction and downward rather quickly. This whole experience lasted from 9:53-9:54 (21:53-21:54) before it moved out of my sight because a structure was blocking my view. I believe it was about 50° off the ground when I initially saw it and when I lost sight of it, it was about 25° off the ground. It appeared to be a bit larger than Mars is to the naked eye and I approximate it did appear to get a bit larger as it moved across the sky. There were few clouds in the sky mostly toward the north (none in the area that the object traveled) and there was no wind.