NUFORC Sighting 158077

Occurred: 2020-07-30 01:00 Local
Reported: 2020-07-31 13:10 Pacific
Duration: 30 seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: Farmingdale, NJ, USA

Shape: Flash
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted beams

I saw a flashing bright white light over Farmingdale, NJ (Monmouth County) between midnight on July 29, 2020 and 2:00 AM July 30, 2020.

My sister and I were looking at the night sky for those two hours by lying on our backs on chaise lounges on the outdoor patio (completely unenclosed) and looking up into an almost completely clear sky. There was an extremely bright half moon behind us, that eventually moved away from us to the West behind the house so that it was no longer shining behind us.

We were looking in the direction of the constellation Lyra, in order to see if we could see any meteors from the Delta Aquariid meteor shower. We were both concentrating hard, and not moving around. We had very good unimpeded visibility of the night sky from our left at the back of the house from the constellation Big Dipper in the West (our view when turning our heads to the left while lying supine almost completely flat), and to the East turning our heads to the right almost to the horizon, which is impeded by a tree line about 9 feet tall and about 9 yards to our right. We had unimpeded views of the sky to the North at about the same height tree line but much farther away from us at a distance of approximately 30 yards, so that we had very good visibility of Lyra and a relative view to the ground from the bottom of the last visible stars Earthward under Lyra that would have appeared to us as approximately 5 feet above the horizon. We weren’t looking at the Southern sk! y, but would not have had visibility behind us for 10 feet above the horizon due to houses and a distant tree line impeding our view below that height. We were not observing that part of the sky (South) in any case.

At approximately 1:00 AM on July 30, 2020, we both saw a bright flashing white light moving from our West (latitude above the Big Dipper, but below Lyra) to the East in a straight line to the East until it disappeared (or stopped flashing) as far to the East as I could see. I believe the total travel time from West to East was approximately 30 seconds.

Our surroundings were silent. The light made no sound. It did not curve or bend, except to follow the natural curve of the Earth. It flashed a variably changing white light from very bright to extremely bright about every 5 seconds as it moved across the sky. Nothing was in its way. There were no airplanes near it or around it.

The white flash was so bright, and so big at one point when it was almost to the furthest East on its path, that it looked like a giant white star-like shaped photo flash bulb firing down from 30,000 feet up in the sky.

If I were standing up and holding a brand new pencil straight up and down by the pointed end in front of me with my right arm extended all the way out and the eraser up where the light was at its brightest, the light would have looked approximately the same size as that new, unused eraser looked with my arm extended and angled up. At that point, the light, which otherwise appeared mostly round, appeared starfish shaped when it flashed its brightest flash, which occurred only once. Otherwise, it was various sizes, but always larger than the visible stars/planets (per the Internet, 5 planets were visible that night) and always round. The only thing that was larger in the sky that night was the moon.

The light was very high the whole time, and I believe it was traveling at the very highest height that an airplane could travel, around 30,000 feet. It did not look at all like an airplane. Neither did it look at all like a natural phenomenon. It looked like an extremely white artificially created light. The pulsing of the light seemed intentionally regular, not sporadic, but not at all like any airplane light that I’ve ever seen. It was much too bright, and much too big. It was also solo. There were no other lights emanating from whatever was moving the light along the sky. There was no vapor trail at all, like the kind that follows an airplane. I could not see any kind of structure attached to the light. The flashing white light was the only thing I saw. There was nothing carrying or holding it that I could see. I have never seen anything else like it. It truly looked as if something was taking pictures of our community from way up there.

We exclaimed to each other such things as “Did you see that? Are you seeing this? Wow! I see it, yes, I’m seeing it too! It’s so bright! What is that?”. We talked about it for quite awhile afterward.

About 3/4 of an hour later, we finally saw one very bright, long meteor flashing from East to West, lower in the sky than the flashing light, and lasting about five seconds, traveling at the same latitude in the sky as the bottom most two stars in the constellation Big Dipper. Its ending point was directly under the constellation Lyra (but much lower, almost eye level), just where instructions on the internet indicated one should look. It was definitely a meteor. We both saw it at exactly the same time, and remarked similarly to “Oh! Finally! A meteor!”. We talked about how it was the largest, longest, and brightest meteor that either of us had ever seen. It was not anywhere nearly as bright or as large as the earlier flashing light had been, and it had the natural quality of every “shooting star” I have ever seen, not an artificial quality like the earlier flashing light.

Later, each of us independently saw a very quick, small, barely visible meteor at separate times. I missed seeing my sister’s because I was looking through binoculars at Lyra. Then I saw one a short time later through the binoculars, but my sister didn’t see it because it was small, even through the binoculars, and very fast, and not very bright.

We didn’t see anything else that night, and went inside at 2:00 AM on July 30, 2020.

Posted 2020-08-06

© 2023 National UFO Reporting Center. All rights reserved. Use or reproduction within any application without written consent is prohibited.