NUFORC Sighting 104912

Occurred: 2013-11-28 18:52 Local
Reported: 2013-11-29 12:49 Pacific
Duration: 3 minutes
No of observers: 4

Location: Gardiner, NY, USA

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

Four Person Fireball UFO sighting in Upstate NY 11/28/2013 6:55 PM

Thanksgiving night. 6:52-6:55 PM, GARDINER/NEW PALTZ, NY.

Four friends watching the night sky from the yard when the object appeared in the west about 30 degrees above the horizon--it was unbelievably orange and bright, moving slowly toward us getting larger and brighter and often made split-second horizontal movements.

The object was totally silent and exhibited a shiny coronal light effect.

After the sighting we researched all comets/rocket launches we might have seen at that time, but none were at the right time or in the correct point in the sky.

It lasted for about two minutes before it faded and vanished.

((ADDENDUM FROM WITNESS))

Peter,

The property where we had the sighting is at the end of a long road in New Paltz, leading to a somewhat remote location directly on the east bank of the Wallkill River. The house faces the River just a few yards to the west. Our friends have a large stone fire pit and it's common for us to make a fire and sit around it after dinner chatting and enjoying the stars. We had an unusually clear view of the western sky due to it being winter and all the leaves being gone. We have seen satellites, shooting stars and many other aircraft over the years; even the international space station, which we confirm with the NASA website as to when it is passing by.

I can't say we took note of Venus on Thursday evening because by the time we got out there, plenty of bright stars were out. However, tonight--Friday, we were out there an hour early and saw the very bright rising of Venus at around 5:30 PM. White , bright, & steady. If you are familiar with the night sky upstate, you can't mistake it as anything else but a planet. I've heard about folks mistaking Venus for a UFO, but this was not the case with us. For one thing, Venus is in a totally different location in the sky: SSW. Our fireball was out of the WNW as we were looking directly over the river at 6:50 PM Thursday night.

At first, we all thought it was an aircraft with its landing lights on; but not white--orange--the color of flame. It was pretty far away, looked like a couple of miles. We realized this was no ordinary aircraft as it appeared to enlarge or come closer to us. I thought it had 2 tiny white dot lights inside and we all saw an "aura" or haze around the sphere. One of us saw a red "trail". The "aura" looked like the suns corona during an eclipse. It made several horizontal shifts to the left and right. The shifts looked perfectly straight and sharp, like it was under guided control. Then we thought it must be a rocket launch or a piece of gigantic space debris burning up slowly. A helicopter on fire? But there was absolutely no sound. While it was in the sky, an actual plane with normal red blinking lights passed by it and gave us perspective on how much larger this fire ball was or how much farther away it was from us. Unfortunately, we were all so stupefied none of us thought to whip out a cell phone and try to record.

As it enlarged (or came closer to us on an easterly course) we got the strange feeling our large pit fire was somehow visible to the craft (IF it was a craft!) and maybe was attracting it's attention? I hate to be unscientific but since we all felt that way afterwards, it's worth noting. After about 3 minutes it slowly just "winked out" and disappeared. Very reminiscent of the second stage of a rocket reaching orbital height.

Interestingly, there WAS a planned launch of a Space X satellite scheduled for 6:20 that evening from Cape Canaveral, but the launch was aborted, so that wasn't it. We were also aware of comet ISON approaching perihelion that afternoon -- but there was no way that was it.

One final observation: we can clearly see a local New Paltz landmark, the little light in the tower at Mohonk Mountain House way up on a mountain from that location. We can see that light with the naked eye, and since my friends have hiked up there many times they know that light is made by two little 75 watt bulbs. After discussing this, we all agree what we saw for that brief time was 1,000 times brighter than that little light at Mohonk.

Thanks so much for your interest. Please keep me posted on any developments or ideas you have on what we saw--what we all might be seeing--in these "fireball" type sightings.

Best,

((name deleted))

((END ADDENDUM))

Posted 2013-12-02