Orange Lights Over Jacksonville Florida

Date: January 1, 2011
Time: 12:20 a.m.

I was enjoying the New Year and walked out into my backyard in Jacksonville Florida. I noticed an orange looking light that resembled an airplane. It was interesting to note that I had only seen one single engine plane since 10:00pm this evening, since I normally see airplanes in the sky constantly. Always see the blinking lights and very accustomed to seeing them.

So I definitely found it odd that I didn't see any airlines flying around at about 10:00pm or later. For me, that was great, because I could see the night sky and it's stars clearly. I was walking back into the house and noticed an orange light, no big deal, but the light was at about 15,000 to 20,00 feet since I'm pretty good at seeing 30,000 feet airplanes. So these lights were lower than a traveling airplane.

I saw one light and thought is was a plane, then thought it was a star, but the reality starting setting in that this wasn't a star, since it was moving quickly and realized that it must be a plane. I was waiting to see the red light. I was waiting to see the pattern of lights that an airplane usually displays. So I looked more intently and the interesting part of what I saw is that it looked to veer and become smaller.

So I was intrigue by that and thought, ok, was that a horizontal firework? Or a fireworks display gone bad? Maybe, except that there were three other orange, semi blinking, ball formation lights in a single file line right behind it. That's when I thought it was weird and pulled out the cell phone camera which couldn't pick up the imaging.

Then called my daughter, 7, to look at it with me and she said, "That's weird" and ran into the house and I called her back out because I love astronomy and I wanted her to see this. She came back out and we watched the light disappear into the atmosphere.

I was looking directly at Orion's Belt when the first light appeared. A little to the left of the constellation is where the other three 'balls' of light appeared and travelled west. It was fast and odd in that the color of the lights were like no other object I had ever seen. It seemed like the sun was shining on these objects as they travelled, but I just don't know if that's possible at this hour. I read an earlier story about another person seeing this type of light also in this area, but the time was 11:20pm. My sighting was eerie at 12:20pm.

Not sure what I witnessed, if it was real or a hoax, but I know it was something.

If you have seen anything like this in the same area please be kind enough to contact Brian Vike at: sighting@telus.net with the details of your sighting. All personal information is kept confidential.

Sightings.com website: http://www.sightings.com/