NUFORC Sighting 11916

Occurred: 2000-02-09 18:15 Local
Reported: 2000-02-09 00:00 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Bristol, VT, USA

Shape: Triangle

Luminous triangular shaped object, very large, moving to Northeast. Object changed to four distinct lighted objects, travelling in a straight line, two by two formation.

Arrived home, got out of my car and looked up at the stars,as I do almost every night. Straight up, moving to the Northeast, I saw a very large triangular sploch of light. Hard to say it was a fixed shape, more like a luminous cloud with definate shape. Brighter at the edges, stars could be seen, faintly, through the object but it did dim the background. Seemed way up in the sky, but was huge, using big dipper as an indicator each edge of the shape was about 1/3 the length of the distance between the last two stars of the handle. I watched for a few minutes, let my eyes adjust, then called my wife to come out and see. She did see the object, although by this time it had moved to the Northeast, slowly, and had dimmed. She went back inside, and I continued to watch, using low power binoculars. Followed the path of the object to the horizan. The object went from its original shape to a series of four objects in a straight line, two, then two, that acted and moved like any other satellite you may see. The original object was not a satellite. I remember a few years back an experiment that had been run where they released something in space to create a luminous cloud, for some type of research. Could be similar project? I have observed the triangular weather satellite formation that occasionally passes overhead, and have always enjoyed looking for satellites. This was not a standard satellite. I certainly do not have any idea what it was.

Posted 2000-02-16