NUFORC Sighting 24658

Occurred: 2002-08-22 20:08 Local
Reported: 2002-08-24 10:46 Pacific
Duration: approx. 1:00 minute
No of observers: 3

Location: Honolulu, HI, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object

Star-sized object shines brightly then disappears after making 30 degree angle turn

My wife, 5 year-old daughter and I were outside of our garage, putting something in the back of our car. I happened to look up, as I often do to check for UFO's, and noticed a small dot of light about the size of the surrounding stars (a pinhead at arm's length)moving from West to East. It covered the length of a ruler at arm's length in about 8 seconds. I told my wife, "Wow, what the heck is that?". She said, "It's probably an airplane". However, there were no blinking lights on it and, from it's very small size, near to the size of the planet Mars, I was more than certain it was very high up. As we watched it I suddenly said, "Look! It just got brighter!" As it moved along in a straight path its diameter increased, it glowed more brightly, from a pinhead size to almost the size of a pea at arm's length. This lasted for about 2 to 3 seconds. (At this point, I had very quickly run into the house and grabbed my binoculars. When I saw it through my binoculars it had a fuzzy appearance to it and it seemed to have white dots around its perimeter. I was using a Bushnell 10X50 to view the object). I then wondered if it had been reflecting light from the sun or if it had actually glowed internally. Then something amazing happened. It dimmed to almost nothing. It was now barely visible, and there were no clouds along the entire flight path of this object. Finally, this is the amazing part, it made a 30 degree (from the horizon) turn to the right and then disappeared, the whole time travelling at the same rate of speed. It's color had first been a pale white and had glowed to a very intense white when it's diameter increased and then had returned to a very dim pale white before it made its turn and disappeared. It's travel path, again, was from West to East and travelling down toward the horizon at almost a 45 degree angle. By the way, my wife also viewed it through the binoculars and said it had a jumpy movement right before it disappeared, AFTER its 30 degree angle turn. I asked her if the ! jumpy mo vement had been from her hands shaking the binoculars, but she said that it had not, as she had both the object and a stationary star in her field of view at the same time. I just couldn't believe what we had seen!! It was my very first UFO sighting in Hawaii!! I was very certain it wasn't a satellite, as satellites don't make turns. It was not a meteor; they don't turn either and it was definitely not a CONVENTIONAL aircraft. It may have been military but, again, from its diminutive size I was very certain this object was WAY UP there in space…



NUFORC Note:

No Iridium satellite flashes are indicated by www.heavens-above.com satellite for Honolulu for this date and time. PD


Posted 2002-08-28

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