2022-11-03 - Rio Rancho, NM - Oval

Saw an oval shape w/ bright lights floating approx 40,000feet in the air. It faded away in an unnatural way. Got some pictures

I saw what I believe to be some sort of flying saucer last month. I was coming home to visit my parents after work and saw it when I got out of my car at their house. It was a windy night and I could visibly see the clouds moving but these lights weren’t moving and they blocked out the stars behind it in an oval shape and that’s what caught my attention. Some facts:
• I was located near Rio Rancho, New Mexico
• I saw it when visiting my parents. I parked and was walking around the car to go inside when I saw it
• We are approximately 15miles North of Kirtland Air Force Base
• The object I saw seemed to be at around 40,000 feet above ground level
• It was tilted around 30ish degrees to the side
• It had one bright light in the middle and several smaller ones on the “back” (my guess based on the direction it was tilted) with one smaller one on the front
• It stayed still in one spot for approximately 5 minutes. I was able to run inside and grab my camera and change the lens to my long lens and get a few photos of it in about 1 minute before it just vanished. It was very hard to get focus on it (not unusual at full zoom, the lens is old)
• When it vanished it kind of just faded. The best (nerdy) comparison I can describe is shadowmeld from WoW, like it just increased in transparency over a split second until it was gone
• I am a published photographer- It was already dark so I had to handhold the camera and manually set the shutter speed as long as possible to minimize the ISO and get the clearest shot possible. I used a 300mm lens on a micro 4/3 camera for an equivalent focal length of 600mm. I had trouble getting focus and I tried a few combos of shtter speed and iso so I have more out of focus shots than in-focus ones
• It seemed to be on the East side of the ridge of the Sandia mountains
• There are several radio towers near the crest of the Sandia mountains. The object was far too high to be one of them, as well as the fact that the towers have red lights and the object was bright white light. I have taken pictures of the towers before and they look nothing like the object. I told my friends about this encounter and 2 of them told me it has to be the radio towers but I know it wasn’t.
• I’m a minor aviation geek and it was absolutely not a plane, but it did seem to be about the height that commercial airliners fly. If I had to guess, the size would be about twice as long as a 767
• The elevation where I’m at is about 5,280 feet exactly, the mountains are about 5,000feet higher than that.