NUFORC Sighting 13758

Occurred: 2000-08-11 04:30 Local
Reported: 2000-08-12 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 1 hour
No of observers: 3

Location: Allegan, MI, USA

Shape: Formation
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Emitted other objects, Changed Color, Aircraft nearby

STRANGE STAR FORMATION, LARGE, BRIGHT PULSATING LIGHTS. THESE "STARS" KEPT BOUNCING AROUND,CHANGING PATTERNS.

three of us were outside saying goodbye for the night. the sky was filled with stars, and we were all admiring them. i noticed one that was much larger and brighter than normal, and it seemed to be moving alot. i said nothing, and cleaned my glasses, tried to look around for uranus and neptune but the moving "star" kept catching my attention. It seemed like alot of the other stars around it were moving, pulsating, changing color, so i kept cleaning glasses and tring to focus better, thought i was seeing things. after about 5-7 minutes my husband and friend commented on "that really bright flashing weird looking star" we noticed another to the lower right also moving in bouncy pulsating,then about 10 min. later we see 3 lights in a straight vertical line, equally spaced. they were in between the 2 big lights. watched them for an hour and half. lots of strange patterns. groups of smaller lights clustered very close would puff in and out of sight. bottom star of vertical formation moved up and slightly to left,out of sync with others. all seemed to dance around and change colors every so often. airplane headed towards the group, when it got close to lower righthand star it went past it then suddenly seemed to move backwards for a second before continuing. strangly enough we also saw at least 5 shooting stars while watching the lights. tiny lights seemed to move quikly in to the 2 big lights and disappear. biggest light showed a very strange light pattern once. it seemed to flash a band of colored light around it. the pattern pulsed as if to a rythm, with at least 3 sections of light. we would have continued to watch, but it was time to go to work. all of us kept trying to convince ourselves that ther was a really great explanation for this. we kept watching trying to figure out if this was real. im glad i was not alone out there or i would have thought i was going crazy. we vowed not to tell anyone else, knowing that this is something no one would believe. i checked the local news and the! astrono my reports hoping to find reasonable explanation, but have found none./ id like to know if anyone else saw this or anything like this before, was it just stars or whaT?

NUFORC Note:

Report is not inconsistent with "twinkling" stars, we feel. PD

Posted 2000-08-19