NUFORC Sighting 12515

Occurred: 2000-04-01 21:00 Local
Reported: 2000-04-02 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 2:15
No of observers: 3

Location: Huntington Beach, CA, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Lights on object

Bright star with red flashing

Our bedroom window faces south giving us an unobstructed view of the ocean and that part of the sky. We routinely sleep with our blinds open to view the stars... what few of them we can see here in the light polluted southern California sky. At about 9pm I saw what I initially thought was an unusually bright star. It was brighter than anything in the sky. I would describe it as nearly the same color as those new auto headlights... the kind that make other headlights look yellow by comparison. Same with this star -- it made the others look yellow by comparison. Another unusual attribute of this star was that it seemed to flicker more than other stars. At about 10pm I noticed that there was a red flash in the star. I got out my binoculars to confirm. The red flashing didn't look like that of an aero plane. It was random, not steady like an aircraft. My thought at this time was that is was some kind of natural space event like a sun going nova or something. I hadn't detected any movement up to this point. I called a couple of my ham radio buddies to ask if they could see it. One could view it by standing on a ladder. It's about 10:20pm now. My buddy noticed it was moving very slowly... like the minute hand on a clock. He said it was dropping relative to the phone wires. He couldn't see the red flashes per say, but thought the atmosphere was altering the color and causing the unusual flickering. We also noticed it was starting to dim. From then on I made note of the movement and brightness of the object. At this point I was thinking that it was falling out of the sky and on fire, gradually growing dimmer as the fire burned out... maybe it was a weather balloon. Eventually I threw out that idea and decided it was not falling but remaining an the same altitude and moving south-west away from me... growing dimmer as the distance increased. I continued to observe the object until about 11:15 pm when it went dimmed to nothing. My opinion at this time, Sunday morning, it that this was some kind of very high altitude aircraft.

Posted 2000-04-15

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