NUFORC Sighting 154698

Occurred: 2020-03-29 20:20 Local
Reported: 2020-04-01 12:56 Pacific
Duration: 40
No of observers: 2

Location: Eau Claire, WI, USA

Shape: Other


Fleet of lights all travel in the same direction

[Central Time] I stepped into the backyard with my dogs, as I commonly do, and looked up at the stars. Was able to spot Mars in the sky, bright and reddish. I stepped back inside the house and told my wife to come outside and check out the stars, Mars was super-bright. She followed.

As we stood outside, unfortunately with our back light on, we stared at the stars when suddenly a bright light, which looked like a low star, flew smoothly by, followed by another after some spacing, then another with approximately the same spacing, etc.

I pointed out the moving lights and my wife said they could be planes. My wife was in the Army working on helicopters for 10 years, I was in Naval Special Warfare for 16 years and we see airplanes overheard often. These lights had no running lights, which I pointed out.

As the lights continued to go by, in the same path (042 degrees)(so starting from SW to NE pathways remained consistent), no running lights (to stress that it was not an aircraft), no sound, spaced evenly at the moment and moving quicker than any aircraft I have seen.

Then a spacing occurred. It became clear that a ‘light’ was missing in formation and my wife even joked about that fact, then another light followed the same path, followed by another, and so forth for the time being. Then another gap between lights.

Trying to watch the lights from inception until they disappear showed that we were limited by our abilities to see them until a certain point, both coming and departing. As these lights are moving quickly and silently across the sky, evenly spaced, an airplane became visible on another and different flight path. This had the strobe light and it was a lot further away than these lights. It’s altitude is where I would expect flights to be.

While we continue to watch the movements and eventual spacing occur, suddenly a space followed by a pair of lights appeared. The lights remained parallel to each other, traveled on the same path, same speed, and same spacing, made no noise and had no running lights. Behind this pair was another single light, which was followed by another light.

Pointing out how cool this event was, my wife mentioned that it could be satellites, to which I informed her that I don’t find it possible that satellites would appear lower than an aircraft (plane) flying by in the night sky, then we spotted another light that was apparently staged midway on the path, but began to travel East to West. Watching this specific light, it appeared to be on an intersecting path with the flow of traveling lights headed on the 042 degree path, but it slowed enough to allow the light to go by and then sped up.

There was another rogue light that appeared to monitor the path of the moving lights, but we lost that because of how bright our porch light got, which ruined our night vision abilities.

In total, there were approximately 30 lights that traveled on that path and they looked to be traveling smoothly, silently in a straight line, however, towards the end the movement looked a little funny to me so I focused on one light as it passed by a star and it appeared to ‘wobble’ or ‘sway’ around the star. Its path did not go straight to where the light of the star and its light were ‘one’ for a moment. It ‘wobbled’ around the star.

This caused me to watch the lights that came behind it in relation to that same star and they all seemed to travel in a slight ‘s’ pattern, back and forth, which allowed the light to look as if it moved to ‘avoid’ crossing the light of the star.

It was an awesome experience and I wish I had my phone on me to record it but unfortunately it was still inside our house.

Posted 2020-04-09

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