NUFORC Sighting 45693

Occurred: 2005-08-20 18:45 Local
Reported: 2005-08-20 21:58 Pacific
Duration: 45 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Seattle, WA, USA

Shape: Light

White, small lights seen in the clear day sky. Objects seem 5 times in various locations over 45 minutes.

Hi, we live in the Olympic Hills neighborhood in north Seattle.

At 6:45PM, while soaking in our backyard hottub, I saw an object in the bright, cloudless east sky that was a light/white "dot" in the sky, almost like a bright star, but it was pretty small. I was sure it wasn't an airplane. I thought it was more likely could be a mylar balloon that someone had let go. It was pretty small and far away and my wife actually couldn't see it.

After watching it for a minute, my curiosity got to me and I jumped out of the tub and ran upstairs to get the binoculars. On the upstairs back deck (also on the east side of the house), I observed the object through the binoculars but there still wasn't much detail to be seen...it looked like a bright white dot, only larger. It was sort of like when you look at stars at night with binoculars... you can certainly see them better that with the naked eye, but they still are basically white dots. The sun which was getting ready to start setting in the west was casting it's light eastward and was illuminating this object.

The object which I had initially seen straight east, had been moving to the north and eventually I couldn't see it anymore. I dismissed this object as a balloon.

I went back down to get back in the hot tub, leaving the binoculars upstairs. Then 10 minutes later, I was surprised to see what looked like the same object, but it was a bit brighter and appeared due east of us, just between 2 tree tops.

I got out again, and went back upstairs to grab the video camera and binoculars. I very quickly headed out to deck, but even though only 30 seconds had passed, the object which had been quite visible was gone again. I turned the camera on and filmed in the same area where I had seen the object, but it wasn't visible. I looked through the binoculars but couldn't see anything.

So this time I took the video camera and binoculars back down and set them on the table next to the hot tub. About 10 minutes later, the object appeared again and this time both my wife and I saw the object through the binoculars and I took a video of the object which lasted about 30-40 seconds before the battery on the camera died. With the camera running, I zoomed in on the object, and you can see the trees underneath it in the forground. The video captures what we saw reasonably well.

With the battery in the camera dead, we passed the binoculars back and forth a few times for a few minutes, occasionally losing sight of the object. My wife had the binoculars and said "Oh, there's 2 objects now" which was something I could also observe with the naked eye. I took the binculars and what I saw was a bit odd. There were definitely 2 distinct objects/lights in the sky that were close enough to each other that both appeared in the view of the binoculars. But then I noticed that the one to the left actually consisted of 2 lights that seemed tethered together.

There was a top light and immediately below it was another light that seemed to be swinging under the top light left to right and back again like a pendulum. The two objects didn't stay visible for long and we lost sight of them again.

About 8-9 minutes later, a single light appeared again and I watched it for about 4 minutes through the binoculars. It was far enough away so that I really had trouble finding it with the naked eye, but could find it eventually if I scanned around using the binoculars. At this point it was just a single light and I didn't see the pendulum behavior anymore. Again I lost sight of the object.

About 8 minutes later, again I saw another light that was directly east and about in the same position of the initial object that I had seen.

So over a period of about 40-45 minutes I guess we same this object about 5 different times in various locations in the sky. They were not conventional aircraft, and certainly were not a single balloon. I supposed it's possible it could be explained by multiple balloons/weather balloons.

It wasn't a mind-blowing event, but was still pretty unusual and getting it on video is kind of nice. You may phone me if you wish to.

Posted 2005-10-11