2021-11-26 - Dandridge, TN - Sphere

Enormous orange light hovering then disappearing

At approximately 7:55pm EST, I was traveling S/SW when I noticed an enormous orange light HIGH in the southwestern sky. I thought it was strange for Venus to be so orange and bright and high at this hour, so I slowed my car and pointed my EarthSky app in its direction and got nothing that should have been there. Venus was below the horizon and like I said, it was bigger and brighter than when I’ve seen even Arcturus or Sirius at their brightest. And it was VERY ORANGE.
I drove to the end of the road where a public boat launch is located. I come to this place often to look at the stars due to the wide-open viewing area over the lake. At this point, the orange light was much lower in the sky, hanging just above the houses on the opposite shore of the lake (looking straight out from the boat launch, which is SW…to my left are the Great Smoky Mountains in the S and to my right are the distant lights of our small downtown to the W…where I watch the sunset).
The light appeared motionless as if it were a planet (even though it clearly wasn’t as high as it had been a few minutes earlier). I viewed the light through my binoculars which I rested on the roof of my car to stabilize my view. It looked like an orange sphere with maybe even a black shadow on the right side. I got back in my car and I took a video with my iPhone8plus through my open passenger window. The time stamp on the video is 8:01pm and the video is 48 seconds long. The camera is zoomed in to its max and you can see the light hovering over the house iights on the opposite shore. Even though the video is shaky, the light never appeared to move or even “twinkle” to my eye.
I quit recording and continued to attempt identification with my sky app (and make sure it was properly calibrated). As I pointed my phone towards the light about a minute and a half later, the light was gone. . GONE. I immediately filmed again to say “it’s gone !” and the timestamp on that 26 second video is 8:04pm.
I never detected movement of the light with my naked eye (like one would with a plane or a satellite), but I clearly observed this light at two very different heights above the horizon within minutes…and then the light just not being there at all.
On the map provided, circle 1 is where I first observed the light, circle 2 is where I stopped my car on the road to look at it through my app, and circle 3 is where I observed the object through my binoculars and took the videos.