NUFORC Sighting 147805

Occurred: 2019-07-24 18:00 Local
Reported: 2019-07-25 17:41 Pacific
Duration: 25 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Westport, CT, USA

Shape: Circle
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Aircraft nearby

Two circular, rim lights blinking and one irregular lower altitude black amorphous

My wife and I were out in the back-yard laying on lounge chairs, looking up at a passing plane and discussing what causes contrails, when she pointed out another object in the sky. It was around 6PM and the sky was completely clear, good light. This other object was flashing, but not moving, from what we could tell. It appeared to be circular or slightly oval, with 3 or 4 lights on the outer edges evenly spaced, again, flashing maybe once every couple of seconds (Not sure, didn’t think to time it.) These lights were very bright, bright to the point that when they were on, the object became somewhat of a bright smear in the sky. When they were off, you could see faintly that the shape was roughly circular. The contrail of the plane that had just passed (going north) was still visible. The blinking object appeared to be at around the same altitude as the contrail, although, I am no pro at determining such a thing.

So, what do you do when confronted with something like this? Well, you look for more like it of course. We scanned the sky and didn’t see any other similar objects. However, coming from the north going south and close to us, maybe 1000ft up we saw a moving black object. It was an irregular shape and it seemed to change shape as it moved which made us wonder if it was some sort of deflating balloon that had been released. However, it was moving at a pretty steady speed and there really wasn’t much wind. I don’t know how big this thing was and will leave it at that for now because my gut tells me it was unrelated and probably some normal thing.

The first object had moved east while we watched the black thing. It had to have moved relatively far because it was noticeably smaller. Then we noticed an object identical to this one coming in from the north, apparently moving in the direction of the first object. By this time, it looked like the first object had stopped moving again, but I could be wrong about that. Hard to tell from that distance/angle. The similar object was clearly on an intersecting path and soon the two met and then from that point on you couldn’t differentiate between them and they slowly faded out.

I can’t say much about the speed of the first object because we didn’t see it move to the other location. However, the object that “caught up” with it was moving fast. We are under a major flight path, see planes passing all the time. The second object was moving as fast as or faster than the planes we see passing by. In that moment I thought it was faster, possibly much faster, only because we had just seen a plane pass by and I think memory of that influenced my analysis. But who knows, really? At times like that you’re not exactly thinking about making accurate measurements.

Of course, I did not have my phone, having left it in my office, but even if I had my phone, I doubt the pictures would have given much because of the altitude of the objects. For the black object maybe, it would have helped because that was closer, but again, I think that was something likely to have a down to earth explanation.

I shared this information with my daughters and they had nothing productive to say, so I gave up on telling anyone else until now.

Posted 2019-08-23