NUFORC Sighting 03507

Occurred: 1998-03-29 19:30 Local
Reported: 1998-04-30 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 3-5 min.
No of observers: 2

Location: Indio, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Left a trail

Bright light or dot with orange tail shot upwards and south across the sky. Tail stopped and so did light. Hovered in sky, then flew parallel to horizon extremely fast (w/o tail) in a stright line, stopped again. Hovered, then traveled downwards(?), tail reappearing in a circular spiraling pattern like a fishhook around object, then disappeared.

My girlfriend(graduate student in music at a university) and I (housepainter) were driving westbound on I-10 returning to California from a trip to Phoenix, AZ. At approx. 7:30 PM we saw what looked like a plane or a rocket taking off or flying slightly up and souhtbound in the sky directly ahead. It had a large orange tail. It got to a cretain height and then stopped cold. It then moved across the sky parallel to the horizon very fast and covered a lot of sky quickly. It stopped again, sat there for a minute, then it moved downward, tail reappearing and swirling around it like a fishhook. It then disappeared. We could make out no characteristics of the object except that it was as bright as a star and the sun had set behind it in the sky.

Posted 1999-01-28

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