NUFORC Sighting 38380

Occurred: 2003-08-14 16:30 Local
Reported: 2004-07-28 18:43 Pacific
Duration: 2-3 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Ottawa (Canada), ON, Canada

Shape: Disk

It wasn't a hot-air balloon; it was a saucer-like metallic object that was slowly turning on its side.

On Thursday, August 14, 2003, the day of the great power black-out of 2003, at approximately 4:30 p.m., I was walking towards the Byward Market area with (name withheld), a fellow (worker) at the (workplace). We were on our way to the pub. We had been walking North on MacKenzie Street and made for the steps between the Connaught Building and the United States Embassy. As I was walking down the steps, I noticed what looked like a hot air balloon in the sky straight ahead of us, i.e. looking East and down George Street. (Note: it is quite common to see hot air balloons over the Ottawa sky. It would be unusual to see them at that time of day however. They usually appear around 6:00 or 6:30 p.m.) When I glanced back at it a few seconds later – now having crossed Sussex Drive and walking on the North sidewalk of George St., I noticed the object’s strange behaviour: changing shape, which a hot air balloon does not do. I tried to get (name withheld) to check it out but by the time I got him to look up, it had disappeared from view behind some buildings. I then figured out why its shape was changing: it was a saucer-like object that was slowly turning on its side, tipping one way then returning to an upright position only to tip on its other side. It was possibly 10 to 20 meters in diameter and perhaps 3-5 meters in height. It was red and dull-grey steel. I think the centre dome-part was red and the rest of it was dull-grey. When I first saw the object, it was about 500-600 meters away and at an altitude of about 150-200 meters. It made no noise, had no blinking lights and did not leave any type of trail in the sky.

When we rounded the corner of Williams Street, we both saw the object in the sky moving due North at a relatively low speed that I would estimate to be between 50-70 km/h. BY then it was about 1 kilometer away. I had a digicam but did not choose to use it because by then the object was pretty far away and it would have probably appeared as a small dot on a picture.

Posted 2004-08-11