NUFORC Sighting 100899

Occurred: 2013-08-07 20:30 Local
Reported: 2013-08-07 20:14 Pacific
Duration: 5 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Sanford, FL, USA

Shape: Light
Characteristics: Aura or haze around object

Bright round lights appear in sky after the launch of the Delta IV Rocket @ Cape Canaveral.

August 7, 2013

Dear Peter,

This evening at 8:30 PM, I was outside getting my horses in for the evening when I looked up in the sky and saw the curly white contrail of what I thought may have been a rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. I live in Sanford, Florida, and as the crow flies about 40 miles from The Cape.

I have a good view of any rocket launch and have viewed multiple shuttle launches right from my yard. I was not happy that I had missed a launch--which later this evening I did confirm was a Delta IV rocket. This time of year, 8:30 in the evening is still daylight and hot!

As I was looking at the curly contrail, I noticed a VERY bright round light to the left of the contrail. It was not moving. It was not an airplane or helicopter. I am in the path of the airplanes coming and going from Sanford Airport. – so believe me, I know what an airplane looks like. No stars were out yet.

As I was focusing on the bright round light, a line of smaller white lights appeared to the right of the large rou! nd light. It happened so quickly. I am not sure if there were 4 or 6 round lights and I could not determine if the lights were parallel to the large white light horizontally or vertically.

For a brief moment, it seemed like I was looking at the lights through a sheer white curtain and what appeared to be an outline was visible which made me think that the smaller lights were actually part of a triangle shaped object. It was brief and the thought or shape was no longer there but the lights remained.

As I was watching the lights, I called my friend and neighbor to come outside to look too. As it turned out, she was in her car driving to the grocery store about 3 miles away. She was watching the white contrails and also saw the large white light but she could not see any more than 2 of the smaller lights.

We stayed on the phone with each other for about 5 minutes watching the lights and the contrail. Oddly enough, above the contrail was a very strange cloud that appeared to be brightly illuminated as if there were lights inside or above where we could not see. There were very few other clouds in the sky and none of them had the brilliance of this one.

For all of this time, the large round light never moved nor did the line of smaller lights. There were small planes off in the distance with their lights clearly visible. As the white contrail began to disperse, a few of the smaller lights disappeared. The bright cloud was still very bright. The last 3 lights remaining were the large round white light and two of the smaller lights to the right of that large light. Then all 3 lights just faded out. The contrails faded and the very bright “cloud” was the last to disperse after I would say about 10 minutes




NUFORC Note:

There was a rocket launch out of Cape Canaveral at 20:29 hrs. on this date. However, that does not appear to explain the other sighting, described by the witness. PD


Posted 2013-08-30

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