NUFORC Sighting 90939

Occurred: 2012-07-14 21:45 Local
Reported: 2012-07-17 09:47 Pacific
Duration: 10 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: St. Petersburg Beach, FL, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Lights on object, Changed Colo

20-30 ORANGE/RED FIREBALLS TRAVEL NORTH OVER ST PETE BEACH AND VANISH OVER GULF

This report is being added as an addition to the one filed on 07-15-2012.

As mentioned earlier, while my son and I were sitting in our backyard at 9:45pm facing south on the barrier island of St Pete Beach, FL, we observed several groups of orange/red amber balls of light traveling north along the beach, then going west into the gulf and vanishing. I was able to video a few of the objects as they approached then veered off. Visibility was reported as 10 miles at the time of the occurrence with S/SSW winds of 5-10mph by NOAA during the time frame. The camera I used to capture the objects was filming at 30 frames per second with approximately 12,000 frames of stills. Upon frame by frame analysis of the objects, they displayed unusual characteristics. The first set of lights were traveling in close pairs, one in front of the other or next to the other. The frames revealed the lights changing colors in fractions of a second randomly from red to blue, green, yellow or white. Also, a ball would randomly disappear in one frame while the ball next to it would not, then reappear in the next frame. The changing of colors and disappearing then reappearing of the lights occurred throughout the filming and all the objects observed displayed these same characteristics. This was not visible while observing t! hem in the sky or while viewing the footage at a normal rate of speed. Additionally, later frames revealed other balls sporadically appearing and disappearing from frame to frame that were in the background of other light balls. Another set of frames shows 2 light balls. One remains stationary while the other one directly next to it streaks west at an extreme rate of speed disappearing within fractions of a second.

Posted 2012-08-05