NUFORC Sighting 40890

Occurred: 2004-12-02 16:30 Local
Reported: 2004-12-02 22:14 Pacific
Duration: 20 minutes
No of observers: 3

Location: Bowling Green, KY, USA

Shape: Diamond
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object, Left a trail

I am a graduate student at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. I was on my way to an evening class. I exited Cumberland Parkway onto I-64 ((CORRECTION BELOW: I-65)), about 15 miles north of Bowling Green (or 75 miles north of Nashville). I was travelling westbound on this 6 lane stretch of highway;it is generally a N/S highway but this stretch from the Mammoth Cave Area to BG is east/west; traffic was moderate. I saw in the sky in front of me what looked like three military jets. There is often air traffic from Fort Campbell to the west. The three "planes" were close together, but all three seemed to be going in different directions. They were about 1/4 to 1/3 up from the horizon. Because they were low in the late afternoon sky it looked like they were illuminated by the sun. It was a mostly sunny day. Two of the objects looked like planes moving directly away from me, i.e. also travelling westbound, because they looked like little reflective, vaguely diamond shaped points of light. As represented by the scale of my hand at arm's length from my face, the appeared to be about the size of wooden matchheads, about 10 inches apart, and both at the same height; the third object just looked like a short contrail line (maybe 1 inch long on that same scale, in a horizontal plane, and appearing to be moving to the north, VERY SLOWLY.

They were quite distinct and quite bright. I thought little of it, but the odd thing was that they seemed to be together, yet going in three directions. Actually, the two diamond objects, I observed, did not seem to be moving at all, but the line object was moving to the right, ever so slowly. They were directly in front of me and quite bright, thus easy to watch continuously. After about 10 minutes the diamonds still had not moved, but now the line, which didn't change shape, started moving back towards the diamonds. After 10 minutes I knew that this was something that I could not explain. I did notice that the objects were beginning to set like planets or stars. Perhaps they were satellites, but were very fixed, except for the line one.

After about 20 minutes, I stopped at a rest area right before my exit, to see if I could talk to someone else about this phenomenon, or corroborate what I saw. I asked one man, and he noticed it and saw it for a long time as well. I also asked a trucker and he hadn't noticed it. By this time it was getting close to sunset, and the objects were too low in the sky to see.

When I got to class, the professor was tardy and I took the opportunity to ask my fellow students if any of them had seen it. Only one man, who came along the same route, saw exactly the same thing that I described, although he though that the thin "line" object was spinning. He also agreed that the two diamond objects were in a fixed relationship, the one to the other, while the other object moved back and forth.

Does anybody have any explanation for this?

((CORRECTION FROM WITNESS))

Correction to my entry - I-65 and not I-64

Was listening to your show tonight and checked an old entry I made. There is one typo. The road is I-65 and not I-64.

((END CORRECTION))

Posted 2004-12-03