NUFORC Sighting 51147

Occurred: 1988-10-10 22:00 Local - Approximate
Reported: 2006-06-27 23:42 Pacific
Duration: 1 minute
No of observers: 2

Location: Boulder, CO, USA

Shape: Light

Three Stars Begin to Move Randomly, Stop, Change Direction, Move Again, And Then Vanish

I've recounted this story many times to many people over the years, but have only just found this site (6-27-06).

It's important to note that I've had similar sightings to this one two other times, all with witnesses. I'll just put them all on this one posting.

First Sighting: The happened way back when I was in highschool, about 1988. The location from which we made the sighting was in the mountains above Boulder, Colorado, in the parking lot of the Bald Mountain hiking area.

I was parking with a girl I was dating at the time. It was about 10pm. We decided to stand up in the back of my car and put our heads out of the sunroof to look at the stars. It was a clear night.

Looking northward, we just stargazed for a few minutes. I then noticed three stars that seemed to be in a perfect equalateral formation, about 75 degrees above the horizon, fairly close together (if you hold your hand out at arm's length, they would be about the distance apart of 1" between thumb and forefinger).

I just looked at them for about 30 seconds, and mentioned them to my companion. She looked at them.

Then they started to move in apparently random directions, each one in a straight line, only a few degrees, and then they'd stop. Then they'd move again for a few seconds, and then stop. Then they all started moving about "1-o'clock" from their position, still in a clear triangle formation, but not equalateral. They accelerated in that direction, and vanished.

We were stunned! We both saw the whole thing. We were both totally sober, too.

A year or so later, I saw a very similar thing, this time with two other sober witnesses, from the top of Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder, at night.

Later, about 1991, I again made a similar sighting, this time with another two sober witnesses, while walking in North Boulder park at night.

Geosynchronous-orbit satellites do NOT look like what I saw. Neither do faster-moving satellites that move counter to the rotation of the earth. Stars do NOT start moving and then stop and then move in different directions and then disappear. I know that some people would say that what I saw were "military planes", but that's not true. They were VERY distant and looked just like stars. Military planes do NOT move like what I saw. I know that it's hard to determine distance at night (or even in the daytime) of objects you see, but I have a good spacial sense and I know what I saw. These were NOT normal astral events.

This sighting is VERY similar to one seen from Twin Peaks in San Francisco that I saw in the database, but can't find now! Anyway, there are numerous cases similar to this one in the database.

NUFORC Note:

Witness indicates that the date of the event is approximate. PD

Posted 2006-07-16