What did I see?

I have a very vivid memory of something that I saw in the sky about fifteen years ago, and I’ve never been able to find a satisfactory answer for what I saw.

I’d been riding my bike near my home and stopped to sit down on the grass near some tennis courts. It was a summer’s day, the sky was mostly clear of clouds, and what clouds were in the sky were moving quite quickly due to a strong breeze. Looking up, I remember very clearly seeing two white (possibly metallic) balls very high in the sky that appeared to be chasing each other. These balls were moving very quickly, against the direction that the wind was blowing (at the altitude the clouds were, anyway), and appeared to be at a significant altitude (for a start, the moving clouds temporarily occluded my view of them, but they appeared to be significantly higher than the clouds that day). I watched these balls follow each other in a tight formation moving around overhead for a couple of minutes at least, before I lost sight of them.

Even back then, I was pretty skeptical of any “woo”, but this sighting seemed to defy any obvious explanation. I’m well aware of eye floaters, but the occlusion of the balls by the clouds doesn’t really fit in with this explanation. Further, floaters look completely different, in my experience, to what I saw. I’m also aware that they could have been birds, but the apparent altitude and speed of these things made me think this was unlikely. I also considered some sort of meteor or shooting star, but these things didn’t just fly straight across the sky, but appeared to move around straight above.

Short of my mind completely fabricating a memory, is there some other obvious explanation for what I saw that I may have missed? Is there any known military technology that fits these observations?

Ball Lightning?

Weather balloon.

Weather balloon being chased by ball lightning.

And the light of Venus, all reflected by a weather balloon.

Floating on swamp gas.
And a couple of vimanas.

A couple of thoughts, not in explanation but for consideration: Distance and size can be difficult to determine against a large, unobstructed (or mostly unobstructed) backdrop – as Father Ted tries to explain. A small object close to clouds might be mistaken for being far away, or a large object far away may be mistaken for being close to the clouds. The other thing is that if the clouds are moving quickly, an object above them may give the illusion of moving in the opposite direction.

How long ago was it? Long enough that a mylar balloon would have been a new sight?

The above sounds very like the first time I saw them. They were tied together in a bunch, but at the bottom of long strings. I was pretty freaked out, and actually unable to run, which was fortunate, because I was still looking when they got close enough for me to see the strings and the knot at the bottom.

They reflected light differently and “danced” in the wind differently than anything I’ve ever seen; my mind really had nothing to connect it to, so that eerie feeling came over me and I was transfixed. I’d imagine that it would have been even more spectacular if there had been competeing windscatching and releasing them as you describe.

TruCelt, thanks, that explanation fits, and I hadn’t considered it. Thinking about it, we also live quite close a park where those foil covered helium filled balloons are often sold in summer.

This was the very theme on a recently-watched UFO Hunters* episode.
*I only watch that show for the commercials!!

Last year I saw weather ballon right after sunset, it was high enough to reflect the sun well after it was getting pretty dark on the ground. I estimated it as 20 miles downrange and about 30,000 ft high.

It made the newspaper the next day since so may people saw it (and called the police. Why people do that, I don’t know). Turns out it was science related project and there was actually a website where you could track it (and it included the historical track data). The night I saw it the balloon was about 100 miles downrange and at 90,000 ft.

Just a tiny bit off in my estimate.

I can’t watch the video at work, but can’t wait to see what Father Ted has to saw about it.

One late night I was walking toward my front door when I saw an explosion high up in the sky and a bright flash. It was very fast, just part of a second, but the flash was so bright that everything turned to daylight for that part of a second. I started calling people that I knew were still up and possibly saw it, but nobody knew what I was talking about. About a week later somebody was talking about seeing a satellite that blew up at that same time on that night. I’m guessing that’s what I saw.

Wonderful. I just spent an hour watching Father Ted clips. Laughed my ass off.

You should also keep in mind that it is well known that we regularly edit our memories. It wouldn’t be at all improbable that your “very vivid memory” is quite different from what you actually saw. Especially if it was 15 years ago.

I’ve got the DVDs. :wink:

One evening I saw a curved line of lights in the sky, rotating and moving too slowly to be an airplane. I know they appear slow at altitude, but this thing was almost hovering. As it changed angle, I could even see where the lights appeared to disappear behind its (still invisible in the dusk) bulk. It clearly was a ring of rotating lights hovering in the sky!

I was excited. As it gradually came closer and I visually resolved it from the bluish twilight surrounding it, I could see that I was right. It was not an airplane, it was almost hovering, it indeed had rotating lights. It was an odd craft after all!

It was the Goodyear Blimp with an electronic signboard running letters around both sides.

Had it stayed far away, I might yet be convinced I’d seen something unexplainable.