NUFORC Sighting 80880

Occurred: 2011-04-14 21:26 Local
Reported: 2011-04-14 22:40 Pacific
Duration: 4 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Shape: Changing
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object

Large orange light moves over Santa Barbara then moves toward the channel islands.

From my back yard a long, orange, very bright light was coming straight in my direction (south east). I think it was at an altitude of 5 to 6 thousand feet high but it was hard to tell. My first thought was that it was a large meteor streaking in the sky but it didn't look to be descending at all. I thought it looked like a meteor because it was the color of fire and very large.

It was totally silent. I ran across the yard and told my mom to "come quick I see a UFO". Before she could get out side the object changed direction from coming directly to me and started moving toward the west over the ocean. As it moved it began to diminish in intensity and started to move faster. My mom and I began to try to explain what it could possibly be but it was clear it fit no identifiable explanation. As it continued to move westward it began to blink out then it would flare up again. It did this 3 or 4 times then just didn't come back.

After it disappeared my mom and I noticed that there was an unusually large number of airplanes in the sky. As we were looking around at the airplanes and commenting on the blinking lights and the differences from what we saw we noticed another strange light that didn't look like the other airplanes going almost directly over us heading north. As it got closer we noticed it was also totally silent and was a large triangle shaped craft (TR3-B I believe). We watched it continue slowly right over our heads and went directly over the mountains to our north.

NUFORC Note:

Missile launch from Vandenberg AFB at 21:24 hrs. (Pacific). PD

Posted 2011-05-02