Occurred: 2012-06-07 21:57 Local
Reported: 2012-06-07 21:49 Pacific
Duration: 150 Seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: Masontown, PA, USA

Shape: Light


Very slow & bright light. No aircraft ident. or post. light. Sighting lasted for about 2.5 minutes. Weird movements. Went NE.

First I will provide background information on the observers. Myself the author of this report is an active certificated pilot in the United States as well as a current college student. I have been watching the sky for my entire lifetime. I have loved airplanes and anything aviation since I was a child. I can look at just about any common or uncommon aircraft and tell you about it. I am not saying I am an aviation expert, rather that I feel like I have some knowledge I could provide on the subject. As mentioned I have become certificated (Private Pilot), and I am currently studying aviation in college. I have completed 2 years so far and I am on the path to become a professional pilot. All of which I can verified. The other observer, my fiancé, doesn’t study aviation, but has learned quite a bit during my long evening lectures on the subject.

We were returning home from getting takeout and commenting on the stars as we typically do. We have not had good weather for stargazing in the last several weeks and we just had some cumulus clouds blotting the sky making the stars look crystal clear in most of the sky. There were light winds coming from the South-Southeast and the humidity was around 70%. The temperature was also around 60°F. As we were pulling in to my yard (serves as a driveway) facing due south, we both instantly saw an extremely bright light due south. From our vantage point, the light was about 70° - 80° off the horizon. Again, this light was extremely bright. It instantly grabbed your attention and stood out from the stars very well. We both exited the car and started studying it.

I immediately started to look for signs of an aircraft. There was no strobe, beacon, or position lights. Just one solid bright white light. There was no size, shape, or definition to the light. Although at times, the light seemed to move back n’ forth getting dimmer than brighter, like some type of oscillation movement from side to side. Because I could not see any other details than this light, it’s intensity is the only identifier of altitude I had to work with. Based on the intensity I assume the lights altitude to be approximately 800’ - 1,200’ AGL. It just seemed to be extremely low, like very low. At the time I had not thought about it because of the fear that started to set in, but there was absolutely no sound. I have had many aircraft fly over my house and helicopters. Anytime there is an aircraft at that approximate altitude flying over my house, my entire house will rumble. There was no sound emitting from this craft/light, period. It was completely silen! t.

The speed of the light was slow if my altitude approximation is correct. At most I could be off maybe + 1000’ AGL, and if that were the case, the light was still travelling at an extremely slow speed and altitude. I would equate it’s speed similar to an rotorcraft in a very slow cruise configuration. If it was an aircraft, then that is the only thing it could have been traveling at that slow of a speed (or a ballon). It was travelling North by Northeast from our perspective at this slow rate of speed. It was unusual though, because it was travelling not in a straight line, but as my fiancé describes it, “like it was going down steps.” I reviewed the logs from other sightings and one on the west coast struck my attention when the author said that is was travelling like, “a falling leaf.” I could use the falling leaf as a better description. It seemed like it was “looking for something” or even “scanning an area.” None of the movements were rapid, but rather, extremel! y docile and lethargic. While viewing it I noticed several flashes of very bright light coming from directly behind me out of the Southwest. They could be described to be like lightning, but there were no observed cumulonimbus clouds around that and no reports of lightning when I came inside and reviewed the current weather data.

This entire sighting lasted for about 2.5 - 3 minutes at most and it really scared me. My hairs were up and I felt defensive for both my fiancé and myself. I have spent my life looking up and have never seen anything like it before. I can rule out satellites as the light was entirely too bright and low and I obtained satellite information immediately after the sighting, and none were in that area. I was trying to have a scientific approach for this and rule out as many possibilities as I could. I have never seen any balloons fly over my house the entire time I have lived here (13-14 years). It could not have been any conventional aircraft due to the lack of sounds, and there are only a small number of RC enthusiasts in the rural country area where I live and I am one of them (mostly old fashioned control line models in my area). To the best of my knowledge, none of these people have the capabilities to do this type of flying in the middle of the night with an RC aircr! aft. The sighting ended due to cloud cover in the Northeast, which the light disappeared behind. Realistically, the light probably travelled about 1-2 NM in the timeframe I viewed it, and was heading towards the largest city in my area, Uniontown. My fiancé did say, “before it went behind the clouds, it seemed like there were a total of three lights that made up the entire light.” I did not see this myself, but I may have ruined by night vision as I looked at my iPad screen to try and get pictures before we lost sight. We had the iPad in the car, but I did not get it to take pictures because I was too scared to move. I had an overwhelming sensation of fear as soon as I realized it wasn’t a plane or anything I had seen before. If I would have used the iPad to take pictures, they would have yielded almost zero data or information, other than a grainy image of something that looked like a light. This is also the third weird light sighting in 3 weeks. The other two wer! e not nearly as bright or low, but rather the opposite. They ! were all outrageously high in the sky and moving at insane speeds. This third sighting was definitive and scary.

There was also one other weird thing worth mentioning. During the flight path of the light, it crossed the visual path I had with a star. When it went in front of the star, it didn’t block out the star, but rather, it “wrapped” the view of the star around it. It was almost transparent, but seemed to move the star until it was past it, then the star moved back. A bending like effect which was rather startling.

Posted 2012-06-08

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