UFO identification - balloon?

Factual Questions
1

Just saw something I couldn’t identify move across the night sky. Sorry, couldn’t get a photo. It was a cluster of 4 flashing lights (pinpoints) plus 1 larger dim white object. The large object was maybe 1/2 degree in apparent size, and the lights were a few degrees apart. Two of the lights were blue, one was green and I think one was white. The green and blue lights were very vibrant color, like LEDs. The whole thing moved across the sky pretty fast, a few degrees per second. The cluster changed shape as it moved. It moved from north to south. And I saw an identical or similar object again, moving in the same direction, maybe 10 minutes later. And a glimpse another 10 to 15 min later. There was no sound.

My best guess is weather balloons, with LED marker lights on the cable & payload. But in that case, wouldn’t the lights be in a straight line? What else could it have been?

2

Nm

3

p.s. This was all seen from my neighborhood. My wife and I usually take a walk this time of day every Saturday and we’ve never seen this before.

Also, we are less than 10 miles from a US Army base (Redstone Arsenal) and we sometimes see military aircraft on training or test flights.

4

Never mind, mystery solved! I just found an announcement from the “Space Hardware Club” of a local university - they launched 3 high-altitude balloons tonight. And their launch site is just north of where we live.

5

:smiley:

In the early 1990s, I had a pen pal who had been in the military back in the 1970s, and when she saw a Harrier jet after its declassification, she knew that this craft explained a LOT of UFO sightings around isolated military bases. She also told a story about when she and a friend were driving from Terre Haute to Indianapolis on a Memorial Day weekend at dusk, and saw a strange craft hovering in the sky. When they realized it was humming, they pulled over and crouched in the ditch - at which time, that strange craft lit up and the word “GOODYEAR” showed up on the side. :stuck_out_tongue: :smack: They hustled back to the car, red-faced, and didn’t say a word about it.

6

When I was a teenager, we were watching a TV show about UFOs, and they showed this clip and the voiceover made a reference to weather balloons. My dad said, “That’s not a weather balloon.” And guess what? He was right! It’s since been determined to have been an asteroid that crossed the earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of about 40 to 60 miles, and had it struck, it could have taken out a large city.