2021-01-20 - Tampa, FL - Fireball

Fireball in sky seemingly evades airplane then disappears

Around 8:15pm tonight as I approached and sat at a traffic light, I noticed a red fireball (a bright glowing but flickering red circular object) in the clear sky hovering overhead east of my position. I watched slowly moving in the sky without a clear path for several minutes as I drove. When sitting at the red light, an airplane began quickly approaching the object from the east. As the airplane neared the object, the fireball appeared to divert its path and began to move away heading southwest for roughly 10 seconds. When the airplane neared the fireball again, the fireball stopped glowing appearing to turn its lights off and it disappeared. I watched the object visibly disappear in the sky as there were no other objects that could possibly be obstructing my view of it.

This is the second time I’ve seen what appears to be this object. The first time around the same time (roughly 8:15pm on Dec 10, 2020), I noticed the red glowing object above the tree line as I was getting out of my car close to area where today’s sighting occurred. Since it was so odd, I stopped and waited to watch it noticing that it was silent. The red glowing fireball was hovering above the tree line for several minutes. Again, another seemingly unrelated plane was flying towards the object. When the plane neared, the object drifted away horizontally from the plane and then appeared to fly downwards towards the tree line. I thought at first that I saw the object stop glowing, but after some thought I rationalized that it must have just disappeared behind the trees. After today’s sighting and watching the fireball stop glowing in plain sight, it lends credibility to the object dimming in my first sighting.