NUFORC Sighting 16792

Occurred: 2001-03-10 23:30 Local
Reported: 2001-03-11 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 5 min
No of observers: 3

Location: Beaverton, OR, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

3 people saw 3 flickering orange lights moving slowly away from each other.

About an hour ago I was leaving my friends' house and as I walked outside, two orange, flickering, fire-colored lights in the sky to the south immediately caught my attention. They were too small to discern any detail. They were about as bright as a typical airplane, but seemed a little bigger. I called my two friends outside to look, but they didn't get outside in time to see anything. I watched the lights for about 30 seconds total. They were about 40 degrees above the horizon, about 1 handspan at arms length apart from each other. I believe the one on the left was stationary when I first saw it, then it started moving slowly to the left away from the other one. (It was moving w.r.t. the clouds behind it.) It moved a total distance of about one handspan. The one on the right was stationary the whole time. Both lights faded out about 30 seconds after I first saw them. I saw nothing remaining after they faded out, and I never heard any sounds. I noticed that a car had stopped down the street. After the lights faded out, the car drove over to the three of us and stopped. There was a couple in the car who had been watching the lights as well. They said they had seen them from the nearby freeway, and had pulled off to watch. They said they had watched for about 5 minutes total, and that there were three lights initially. Apparently this third light had started out stationary and then slowly moved to the right, away from the other two lights and disappeared before I had come outside. We all agreed that they were much more orange than the red broadcast tower lights visible to the east, and too orange to have been red airplane lights. The couple speculated that the flickering orange color looked like fire and may have been candles tied to balloons, except that all three were moving in different directions, which seemed strange. There's a very slight, variable breeze outside at ground level, and the clouds aren't moving noticeably w.r.t stationary objects. The weather is cloudy--no stars visible--and the lights were below the clouds. When they disappeared I couldn't tell if it was because they entered the clouds or because they faded out. There's a lake about a quarter mile to the south. I didn't think to ask the couple how far away they thought the lights might have been. Maybe it was just a prank, but I figured I'd report it in case anyone else saw anything unusual. I would guess that others probably saw it too since it was visible from the freeway. Background of the observer: I'm a 32 year old software engineer with a computer science / electrical engineering bachelor's degree.

Posted 2001-03-16

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