2020-07-14 - Lords Valley, PA - Cylinder

glowing orange cylinder flying width-wise about 2000 ft in altitude crossing 70 degrees of sky silently in 8 seconds.

NOTE: I have also submitted this to MUFON as case 110160 and I am NICAP's MADAR Node # 44 in Pike County , Pa.

I am a NJ MUFON Field Investigator at my summer home in Lords Valley, Pa. in a rural community in the Pocono Mountains surrounded by forest called Hemlock Farms.

Yesterday was a beautiful cloudless night in the Poconos with a gazillion stars. I took my kids out to look for comet NEOWISE but we were disappointed but just for a bit! Something spectacular happened. I love to stargaze and was on my porch in a pitch black forest watching the stars for 2 hours with my 8 y/o son David explaining the big dipper etc.

At exactly 10:16 p.m. eastern time, we witnessed an object traverse the sky from southeast to northwest in no more than 8 seconds. It was an orange cylinder. No FAA standard lighting whatsoever. No comet or meteorite like trail behind it. At arms length it was the size of my pinky nail. It did not fly head to tail but rather sideways which I found bizarre as that is not aerodynamic. I used my closed fist to judge that it took 7 fists at 10 degrees of sky each to cross the heavens till I lost it behind my roof. 70 degrees of sky in 8 seconds give or take is FAST. I did not have my phone but it would have been gone by the time i readied the camera anyway.

I ran to check the time (exactly 10:16 pm) and went to my computer to check flightradar24.com which uses UTC time which is tomorrow's date July 15 at 3:16 a.m. Attached is a screenshot of what I saw overlapping an otherwise silent flightradar24.com sky for the 15 minutes before and after the event.

I am a very savvy MUFON Investigator and have never filed a MUFON report of my own but this thing was anomalous. Please see my attached screengrab with notations.

Here is my dilemma. I also belong to NICAP's MADAR project which means I have a radar setup containing a very loud DAS alarm and a baramoter/magnetometer checking for magnetic or barometric changes. My NICAP MADAR node IS #44. DAS alarm has never gone off in months. In my humble opinion this thing should have triggered my DAS alarm. It did not. My son became frightened and ran in the house when he saw it.

I don't know how to calculate the speed of an object crossing 70 degrees of sky in 8 seconds but it was really fast!!!! Does anyone know the formula? Please teach me it if you know! Additionally i get a lot of small Cessna type aircraft flying at between 2 and 4 thousand feet. Moments later such a craft passed by flying east to west. Judging by its size I estimate the orange sideways cigar was lower than 2000 feet and probably about 30 feet long but incredibly thin, perhaps only 2 feet wide from front to back. No noise. Speed blew the Cessna out of the water. Cessna took about 40 seconds to cross the same amount of sky.

I have been a photo analyst for MUFON for about 3 years. I have looked at hundreds of videos of orbs, triangles, cigars, etc. While it was a common shaped cigar, it was glowing orange which is something I never saw before and it wasn't flying nose to tail but rather width-wise (imagine airplane wings without a fusalage.) This,for me rules out meteor however I have not had a chance to check the American Meteor Society fireball logs on their website yet.

However it followed a straight path without variance and I feel it was a craft rather than an odd shaped orb. It was,however, the exact color typical of an orb, the kind which Pa. MUFON F.I. Terry Ray investigates!! Recent advances in plasma technology can engulf an aircraft and appear as a plasma in the sky. This is done because plasma absorbs a radar beam and nothing is returned to the ground station which is why I think this object did not show on flightradar24.com even though it is visible to the naked eye. The other reason it may not have shown was because it was below radar level under 2000 feet by my reckoning.

Finally in the flightradar24.com screen grab you can see the only air traffic of note was far to the east - two planes depicted as yellow objects.

NOTE: Flightradar24.com uses UTC time. which is 5 hours later than eastern u.s. time. therefore the bottom of the flightradar24 screen grab shows July 15, 3:16 a.m. rather than local time of July 14, 10:16 pm.

My feeling is that it was a UAV, but please feel free to disagree or call me with any additional questions you may have! I have been wrong before. I am also submitting to NUFORC as sometimes they get sightings similar to mine that MUFON doesn't get and vice versa! Thank you!