NUFORC Sighting 32560

Occurred: 1977-07-25 23:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2003-10-22 12:23 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute
No of observers: 2

Location: Hebron, KY, USA

Shape: Oval

Strange very bright lights moving faster that aircraft from west to east.

My friend and I were driving north on a state highway on a clear moonlit night. I noticed a light or brightness over my left sholder and glanced that way and saw some really bright lights in the sky. I scared by buddy as I locked up my brakes and pulled over to the side of the road and I remember yelling "what the hell is that"? We both got out of the car and looked up. The lights were in a v shaped formation and there were 4 total and the one on the north side was a little offset from the rest but traveling at the same speed. The lights were moving west to east and as we watched them they flew right thru a partial moon but I could not see any outline nor were they pulling any contail behind them best I could tell. I did not see any navigaton lights as on a plane or any strobe lights. The lights continued on an easterly heading and did not change appearance in any way, it was hard to tell what altitude they were, but I did not hear any noise nor see any contails or nav lights. The lights were traveling at a fairly fast speed but hard to estimate, I guess the best way to describe would be when you see an airliner pulling a contrail these lights were moving about 3 or 4 times faster than that. My friend and I watched them until they went out of sight on the east horizon and at that point went on home. We did not think a whole lot about it until we saw in the paper a day later other people had seen strange lights in the sky.

A little background on me at that time. I grew up close to a large airport and was always interested in aircraft and was very familiar with most aircraft by a very young age. I could tell with a quick glance a Boeing 707 from a 727 from a DC-9..etc and even at night I could usually tell by light configuration what kind of aircraft I was looking at. I was a student pilot at the time and have go on to become a pilot and have been in the aviation industry in airline operations for 22+ years.

This report is not made up or a crank thing done for fun, this sighting has bugged me for many years and now that there are places to report them I have decided to do so.

NUFORC Note:

Date of incident is approximate. PD

Posted 2003-10-31