NUFORC Sighting 105509

Occurred: 2013-12-21 20:15 Local
Reported: 2013-12-22 21:54 Pacific
Duration: 60 seconds
No of observers: 1

Location: Kernersville, NC, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

Two very silent and steady red lights at relatively low altitude with individual paths pass directly overhead in the night sky.

I was in a parking lot at 36.074638, -80.057982. The objects were steady red lights, similar in appearance to lights on a distant radio tower. In the course of about 60 seconds they moved at relatively constant speed from about 45 degrees on the horizon almost due South (when I first observed them) to about 30 degrees on the horizon almost due North, passing directly overhead.

When I first observed them to the south, they had some initial horizontal movement that brought them very close together a couple of times, and then they separated by about a degree or two, and remained roughly parallel for about 40 seconds as they passed overhead and towards the North, and one was a couple of degrees in front of the second.

I thought it was strange to see only single red lights from individual aircraft. But I also thought that they were likely helicopters when I first observed the horizontal movements they initially made. I fully expected that as they grew close! r, I would hear some form of engine or rotor noise. But as they passed overhead, there was nothing but silence.

If they had been aircraft, I would have estimated their altitude to have been a couple thousand feet. When they got to the 30 degree angle in the north sky, one red light veered off to the right at about a 45 degree angle and I lost sight of it, and about 5 seconds later, the second light disappeared, obscured by low level clouds and city lights from the horizon.

I am a licensed professional civil engineer, and I happened to be in my church parking lot at the time of the observation. I tried to take a phone video of the second half of the observation, but I only got a completely white image.

Posted 2013-12-23