Occurred: 2005-08-24 23:00 Local
Reported: 2005-08-30 15:55 Pacific
Duration: 3 minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Shape: Changing
Characteristics: Lights on object, Left a trail, Emitted other objects, Changed Colo

Fast craft transformed multiple times and dropped off something that hovered in the sky.

A bunch of friends and I were at Knapp's Castle (ruins in the mountains near Santa Barbara) when my sister noticed a strange blinking white/yellow light in the sky coming from a westerly direction (over the ocean).

After maybe five to ten seconds it transformed into a string of three or four (I think it was three) lights moving in an east/southeast direction. By this time the lights had stopped blinking. Then the last of the lights dropped off and moved away from the group. This light stayed pretty much in the same area for the whole time and blinked.

The other group continued in an E/SE direction when suddenly it transformed again into a glowing red/orange ball. The glow was like nothing I had ever seen before.

Then we noticed a trail behind it. The trail was not like the ones created by a jet, it was wide, but was more transparent. It was moving faster than anything else in the sky. All of a sudden it made a right turn toward the ocean and then another heading south. Then it appeared to stop, giving the impression that it was heading away from Earth. It then suddenly diminished in size until it had disappeared. The last bit happened in less than a second and it was definitely moving away from us.

We had lost track of the blinking light and it was not visible in the sky. Seemed like it was a reconnaisance mission to deploy or drop off some sort of probe.

Posted 2005-10-11

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