NUFORC Sighting 87618

Occurred: 2012-03-12 01:02 Local
Reported: 2012-03-12 08:38 Pacific
Duration: 2 minutes
No of observers: 2

Location: Rock Springs, WY, USA

Shape: Chevron
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted other objects, Changed Colo

Chevron Shaped array of five large lights with sparkling light all around them.

My wife and I were awoken by our small dog shaking his coat as he woke, so my wife got out of our bed to let him outside. About one minute later my wife came running into our bedroom and went to our bedroom window asking me to come quickly and look at some lights she had saw in the sky and ask me if I had ever seen anything like that. (I am a ten year navy veteran who worked on an aircraft carrier and flight line.)

I quickly got up to and rushed to the window and I observed a large array of lights in the sky flying right over our house heading northeast moving rather quickly. The array of lights appeared to be about ¼ to ½ mile or more in length at about ½ to ¾ mile from the ground. I initially saw a long row of white flashing light, in an inverted "Chevron" pattern; I couldn’t initially count how many lights because I was looking out a window with a screen on it. But the flashing lights had no distinct flashing pattern to them but they did have with intermittent red/orange being trailed by two other white lights from behind that were not flashing at all.

But, what was weird was that as each of the larger white lights flashed there came sparkling white lights all around that specific light that resembled light sparkling from a sparkler. But I could not discern a distinct shape from my vantage point.

During this time my wife ask me if I could hear the noise it was making and it was at this point I noticed a faint, low, dull, continual roaring sound. My wife and I quickly ran to our back yard sliding door to get a better look at this thing or things. By the time we reached and opened the back door I could faintly hear the sound which was growing fainter and it was at this time I observed the array of lights and it was at this point I could see five distinct larger lights with this barrage of sparkling lights all around them.

My wife reported that what she saw was five distinct lights surrounded by these strange sparkling lights but she claims that these lights in a "Chevron" pattern were not flying as to be pointing to the horizon, as a squadron of jets would fly, but the point of the chevron was pointing to the ground as they fly over her! This seemed weird to me. We observed that all the lights were moving at the same rate of speed and because it was a dark night we could not tell if it was a single aircraft or multiple aircraft.

Not sure if you folks can help us identify what this was but we are curious if others have witnessed something like this in the past. Thank you for your time.

Posted 2012-03-13