NUFORC Sighting 153728

Occurred: 2020-02-26 23:55 Local
Reported: 2020-03-01 06:34 Pacific
Duration: 10 seconds
No of observers: 2

Location: Marco Island - rough approximate, FL, USA

Shape: Oval
Characteristics: Lights on object, Aura or haze around object, Emitted other objects, Changed Colo

White object traveling in FL night sky transformed into small red object making fast sharp turns before shooting upward, disappearing

On the late evening of Wednesday, February 26, 2020, while on the Royal Caribbean ship Enchantment of the Seas, at approximately 12:00 AM - 12:30 AM, while sitting on my starboard side balcony, a friend and I were kicking back and just taking in the waves. The Florida shoreline was only 1-2 miles out. I surmise this by the two stationary lights that were slowly passing by as the vessel was proceeding back to its port in Tampa, at 13 knots. (As observed an hour earlier on the cruise ship tv in the main lounge.) While I have tried to find the exact position of the cruise ship using a few online marine vessel tracking sites, I am disinclined to spend the $40-some fee to better pinpoint its location. If you already have subscribed to the services of one of these marine vessel historical tracking sites, it would be easy to plug in the name of my cruise ship, and that time between 23:55 - 0:30 to find a more precise location of where the cruise ship was at.

With that being said, as my friend and I were kicking back and just looking out into the distance, I observed a white light traveling northward (right to left from my vantage point). While it was cloudy out, I could make out the object above with what looked like to be an airplane, that was between a half mile to one mile off the ground. In that it was traveling at an airplane low-level, and in that there was nothing else in the sky to view at that moment, I kept my eyes on it. Mind you, its appearance was a blurred white object in the sky, akin to what an airplane would like as it was on runway approach withinin cloud cover.

What my friend and I saw next is why I am writing you now. The northward white object disappeared (I chalked it up to a heavier cloud cover), and not more than 1-2 seconds later, a much smaller red light (an object that was the size of a satellite in the night sky) appeared where the white object previously was, and traveled a perfect 90 degrees left to it, which lasted 1-1.5 seconds, whereby the same red light made another SHARP 90 degree turn and traveled to my left, whereby, it made another SHARP 90 degree turn further upwards in the sky (resembling some kind of “inverted shooting star”…except shooting stars do not travel that direction!), and then it was gone.

The red light object never wavered from its path, nor its speed, nor its perfect 90 degree turns. There was no mass to this red object I saw, and why I could see it clearly through the clouds - I do not have an answer for. Perhaps it was its brightness.

My friend first chalked it up to a drone, but I demurred in that it was simply moving too fast (in both its white form, and in the red form). She then said perhaps it was a laser, but I digress. The area we were traveling past was not populated (as referenced, there were only two lights - period - on the horizon, and the skies were dark). If the white light was some sort of spotlight, I would have seen something emanating from the ground. And, if in the remote event it was someone else onboard the cruise ship with a large spotlight, the clouds would have been illuminated differently. This light was definitely from within the clouds.

So ends my sighting. This is the first time I have ever experienced such an unexplained night sky phenomenon. I keep an open mind to life, and have a critical sense to my reasoning. Perhaps this was some government project, but I am left stumped on how the close-white object transformed into a smaller red object, along with the fast speed, and the series of precise 90 degree turns, culminating with a trajectory high into the sky before disappearing.

Thank you for your consideration.

Posted 2020-04-09

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