NUFORC Sighting 164164

Occurred: 2016-12-16 11:30 Local
Reported: 2021-07-26 08:44 Pacific
Duration: 35 minutes
No of observers: 1

Location: Tucson, AZ, USA

Shape: Other

Shape-shifting pod with moving appendages gave many different looks in 35 minutes. NW Tucson, AZ.

I was out in my back yard doing yard work at about 11:30am on 12/18/16. A reflection from the west at approximately 5-10 thousand feet (only an estimate, of course) caught my attention. When I focused on it, I could see that there was something that was metallic and rotating clockwise in a slow, stable, and consistent manner. It gave the impression of being something heavy (not a balloon), if that makes sense. There was no noise at all.

We got a lot of military and commercial air traffic over this location: helicopters and all manner of planes. We even saw the Goodyear blimp from this location several times while we lived there, but this sighting was unique.

I had my phone and tried to take a picture, but the object was too high up for me to get a good shot. I ran inside and got my SLR camera (Nikon D60), quickly changed lenses to my telephoto lens, and ran back outside, thinking that the object might be gone by this point. It was still there, so I started taking pictures.

The object appeared and then disappeared from my view based upon how it was reflecting the sunlight. Since it seemed to be several miles away, I had a hard time focusing my camera on it, but I was able to get quite a few good shots. The object’s appearance changed many times while I was taking pictures. It was very confusing, to be honest. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Finally, it appeared to change shapes into something that looked like a small, white plane that circled the area where the sighting occurred. Finally, that “plane” flew off to the north and seemed to morph into a larger white plane that headed east along a typical (for that area) commercial flight line.

Posted 2021-08-16