NUFORC Sighting 43714

Occurred: 2005-04-29 21:00 Local
Reported: 2005-04-29 20:31 Pacific
Duration: 90 sec
No of observers: 2

Location: Cary, NC, USA

Shape: Light


Two small yellow-white lights moving parallel to horizon; fuzzy ring of light "explodes" around chaser; continues to follow for ~1min.

Correction! Event date was 04/29/2005, not 04/28/2005. Sorry! Walking out of BJ's @ Centrum at 9:00pm tonight, I happen to glance southeast towards Jupiter when I see two small, moderately bright (say Mag 0) yellow-white lights about 3-5 moon diameters below it and one moon diameter apart. In an instant I see what at first I think is a firework explosion: a fuzzy ring of yellow-white light around the rightmost light, which expands to about 2 moon diameters in about 5 seconds, then fades out. The two lights move along a line northward, more or less parallel to the horizon, through the eastern sky. The rightmost (trailing) light is "fuzzier" that than the front (leftmost) one. Over the span of about 90 seconds they move about 25-30 degrees to the northeast, before they seem to fade out behind the clouds. During this time the leading light increased its distance from the trailing one to about 5 moon diameters. The trailing light grew less fuzzy over the period of time that I followed it. The velocity of the objects was consistent with either high-altitude airplanes or satellites. The speed, color, and brighness was not consistent with any meteor I've ever seen.



NUFORC Note:

We assume that the witness describes above the launch of a Titan IV missile out of Cape Canaveral, which occurred at 20:55 hrs. (Eastern) on this date. The missile apparently was launched to the northeast, so it was visible along the eastern shoreline of the U. S.. PD


Posted 2005-05-11

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