Matteson, Illinois UFO Sightings in 2004

Full Report Text:

We were walking are dog and we saw a bright large object in the sky. It look like a line star and it had 6 long lines coming out of a small middle and they were cross and very bright white. It look like it was less than a mile away from us it was coming toward us we knew because it kept on getting brighter and brighter.

it look as larger than a foot ball feild and then saw a dim blue flash from middle of object come toward the ground and then it whent away real fast the huge croosed lines of very bright light whent away into a little tiny dot that flew away fast and the dissapeared all this happend than less then a 1 min .

Full Report Text:

3 very bright red lights I was taking out the trash for tomorrow morning's pickup, and as I was returning to the house was surprised to see three VERY bright, ruby red lights. At arm's length, they were about 1/8" in size. They were not moving, and were in a more or less straight line that stretched about 35-40 degrees across the sky.

They brilliance was striking. The lights did not blink on and off, and their luminosity was constant. There was no noise I could associate with the lights.

From my perspective, the lights were at about 45-50 degrees from ground level. As I watched, the lights moved very slowly from north to east, and remained visible as they moved from clear sky into cloud cover. When the lights were due east, they stopped.

After about 1 minute, two of the lights moved fairly close together (about 3" apart at arms length). The light that was off alone (it was the nearest to north-northeast, and at arm's length about 2 or 3' from the other two lights) disappeared - just blinked out - at about 8:06 p.m.

Then, one of the two remaining lights (maintaining the distance I described) slowly rotated about 180 degrees around the other light, which was not moving. I lost sight of the lights in heavy cloud cover. I submitted a report in August of this year about some other red lights I observed, and find myself amazed to be submitting another one.

My wife and my neighbor also saw the lights. You folks may contact me, but I would appreciate your not releasing my name/address/phone number. Thank you.

((NUFORC Note: Please see other reports. PD)).

Full Report Text:

Multiple red lights. Hi. I am an avid amateur astronomer with over 12 years experience (and an attorney of 18 years experience).

On the evening of August 21, 2004, I was setting up an 8" schmidt-cassegrain "go to" scope on my deck when I noticed a strikingly bright red circular light (it was slightly smaller than the size of Mars when that object was at its largest in the sky in late August 2003)just a few degrees west of Polaris. It did not twinkle; it had a constant (to my eyes) brightness. The light's magnitude was similar to that of Jupiter's when that object is viewed on an exceptional viewing night.

The light really caught my eye, as nothing as large and luminous as it was should have been in that portion of the sky. The viewing conditions were excellent (e.g.

, no clouds whatsoever, stable atmoshpere, and even with my eyesight (and this is saying a lot) I could easily discern (without telescopic aid) the split between Mizar and Alcor in the Big Dipper's handle. I rushed my set up of the telescope, hoping to at least see the light in the telescope's finder scope, but the red light rapidly (in just 1-2 seconds) turned white and just as quickly disappeared, before I could get my telescope on it. I was intrigued, but figured that my eyes had just played a trick on me (you know how people confuse stars and planets for ufos!!).

As the red light I have described was no longer visible, I began my evening's observing, bouncing around between different stars and messier objects, etc. Oddly enough, after about 30 minutes or so it occurred to me that I had not seen the lights of a single aircraft since I started the evening's viewing (that was very unusual, as I live in an area where flights out of Midway Airport are frequently overhead, and small aircraft are quite frequent, as well). That puzzled me, but I just went back to my viewing.

Around 2330 or so, I took a break from the telescope and noticed what appeared to be the lights of an aircraft approaching from roughly northeast and heading roughly southwest - but the familiar green and red, starboard and port lights I expected to see weren't there. Instead, there were two very well definded circular red lights that ran an equidistant, and parallel course (as near as I could tell, slightly farther apart in distance than an average airliner's running lights). I cannot tell you what altitude those lights were at, and although they passed through a good amount of sky, they passed out of view quickly.

I heard no sounds one would ordinarily associate with aircraft of any kind when I saw any of the lights I have described in this report. I am only sending you this report because: (i) a non-lawyer coworker who lives in Tinley Park and knows of my astronomy hobby asked me Monday morning if I had observed anything unusual in the sky Saturday evening. When I told him I had (and without telling him about the lights I had seen), he related to me that he and his wife had seen an odd red light in hee sky Saturday night, that he had told other coworkers of he and his wife's experience, that the other coworkers thought he was nuts, and that he wanted me to verify for them that there had been an unusual odd red light in the sky Saturday night (I did); and (ii) I read the reports of equal viewing date on this site that came in from Tinley Park, Illinois, which is the town adjacent to where I live.

I would like to note that when I broke down my telescope and brought it back inside my home on Saturday evening, I did not tell my wife of nearly 30 years of the red lights I had seen, but that I did tell her about the absence of air traffic, and that I then went back outside and watched the sky for about another 30 minutes - and saw no aircraft. Highly unusal. I have no idea what the red lights were, or why air traffic seemed to be nonexistent (at least from my vantage point) that evening, but must say that that evening provided me with the most unusual viewing experience I have ever had.

(You may contact me at my work telephone number (see Part 2, witness contact information, submitted with this report, if you wish). Thank you.