NUFORC Sighting 100412

Occurred: 2013-07-04 20:45 Local
Reported: 2013-07-23 05:22 Pacific
Duration: 5-10 minutes
No of observers: 200

Location: Washington, NJ, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Aircraft nearby

Glowing Orb/ Fireball

This past 4th of July, 2013, my family and I had gone to go watch the community fireworks show at the local middle school. We arrived at the field around 8:30pm. It was still light out and there were already hundreds of people gathered in the field. We were there for maybe about 15-20 minutes watching the kids run around catching fireflies and I was setting up my camera getting ready for the show. I have a Cannon Rebel T3i with a 55mm-250mm telephoto lens and was playing with the settings to get the best fireworks shots I could.

My youngest son who is 5 years old saw something in the sky and told us all to turn and look at it. He thought it was a balloon. When I turned to look at it I knew right away that it was no balloon. It appeared to be some sort of glowing orb. It was so bright at the center that it appeared bright white and had an orange glow around that. As an avid photographer I had taken many photographs of balloons and knew right away this was different. It was traveling horizontally across the sky about the speed of a commercial passenger plane. It moved very smoothly and silently. It was probably flying around 15000 to 20000 feet based off where most planes fly. It maintained its speed and altitude as it crossed the sky.

Soon after my son pointed it out to us I began to hear others around the field taking notice and asking what it was as well. Everyone was looking and pointing at the object as it hovered across the sky. It traveled about three quarter of the way across the sky before it! disappeared. In that time I managed to take two photos of the object. I was so interested in watching it that I didn’t take any more. Shortly after the object disappeared from the sky a plane fly overhead seeming to follow the exact path the object took minutes before. It moved at a very similar speed only there was apparent noise generated by the planes engines.

The plane also seemed to fly further across the sky than the object did getting smaller until it was no longer visible.

One of the photos I took had apparent distortion to the object from shaking the camera. The other was very clear. Once I got home I was able to crop the photo and get a better look at the object. It appeared to have some sort of structure inside the “glow”. As far as what it was I couldn’t make that out. No one in the field that night seemed to talk about it after it disappeared. I kept a close eye on the news papers and news websites following the event to see if anyone else reported it or if there was any mention of what it was. There were hundreds of witnesses that night but I have yet to hear anything from anybody as far as what they thought it was.

Posted 2013-08-30

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