NUFORC Sighting 60332

Occurred: 2007-12-11 22:15 Local
Reported: 2007-12-12 13:44 Pacific
Duration: <1 min.
No of observers: 2

Location: Bell Buckle, TN, USA

Shape: Orb
Characteristics: Lights on object

High-flying light that grew brighter, then dimmer, showing a blinking red light.

At approximately 21:15 my wife and I were walking our dogs. She looked up (looking for a meteor from the Geminids) and saw a light. She pointed it out to me and, as we were watching this "meteor" move very slowly across the sky from North to Southeast, it suddenly glowed very brightly and then dimmed slowly. As it continued to slowly dim, I could make out a blinking red light. For this to have traveled that distance in that short of a time, high enough for us to not be able to identify it, leads me to believe that it was at an extremely high altitude. The only blinking light that I could see was a red one, no green or white as an airplane would have. Neither one of us could come up with any idea as to what this was since aircraft have the additional wing lights, meteors don't have blinking lights, and satellites generally are in stationary orbit or are in equatorial orbits. I spent eight years in the Navy in communications and I've never seen a satellite that had an orbit travelling in this manner.

Posted 2008-03-04