2021-12-02 - Clovis, CA - Cigar

I witnessed a cigar-shaped light slowly travel over my head before disappearing.

I just got home from work and was getting out of my car when my attention was initially grabbed by a bright shooting star that I saw in my peripheral vision to the north-west. I looked up and saw another unusual light to the south-west which I then turned to look at. It was a big bright cigar-shaped light. It was travelling slowly and steadily in a roughly north-eastern direction. I have lived near an airport for over 30 years and am used to seeing airplanes and drones but it was immediately clear that this was something that I hadn't seen before. It was a thick line of light. It did not blink or change.
It made no sound. I stopped what I was doing to look at it. The sky was clear.

I pulled out my phone to record a video but later discovered, to my great disappointment, that it was in picture mode instead of video mode so all I got was one blurry photo. The object was very bright and to my eye it appeared larger and had a haze around it, giving it a halo effect, which was not captured in the picture my phone took. Interestingly the picture also captured a second oddly shaped light which I did not notice myself at the time.

I estimate that the object was visible for between one and two minutes. It slowly travelled in a straight line. If straight up is 0 degrees then I observed it from about 45 degrees to the south-east until it was about 15 degrees to the north-west, travelling not quite over my head but a bit to the north of me. Then over the span of about 15 seconds the light slowly and steadily faded out. It seemed like an oddly long time for the light to dim. I continued to watch that part of the sky for another minute. The object was big enough that I felt that I should still be able to see it even without the light but it was as if the object itself had faded away.