I saw 2 UFOs about midnight PST 9/18-9/19

At that time, I was flying west on an Airbus 320, probably over New Mexico. We were probably at least 25,000 feet up. I had a window seat on the starboard side and was enjoying watching electrical storms dance across the sky to the north. The Big Dipper was hanging low in the northern sky, and was visible most of the time, with the lightning activity below. Intermittent patches of clouds sometimes obscured my view of the stars, but most of the time I had a spectacular view of the sky above the long line of storms to the north which stretched approximately from the mid-western states to western New Mexico.

It was after a short period of cloud obstruction when the strange lights appeared.



If you were to mark a spot midway between the line joining the two stars at the end of the handle and draw a line perpendicular to and up from that line, the lights appeared on that line in an area at the top border of the drawing where there's a faint star. They were slightly brighter than the three stars that comprise the end of the handle of the dipper and appeared white. At arm's length they were about a pinky finger's width apart. I'm familiar with that area of the sky and knew immediately that they couldn't have been stars, planets, or any other celestial body. My first thought was that they were satellites, so I watched them for any movement. They remained perfectly still like stars for about a full minute. Then briefly, for several seconds, my eyes were drawn to a few flashes of lighting below. Then when I looked back up, the two lights had disappeared. I continued watching that area of the sky for at least 15 minutes afterwards but they never reappeared.

Weird.

Could be distant lightning reflected off small clouds.

Distant lighting of what? They were indistinguishable from stars.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2013 12:03AM by Hornswoggle.

Wish you had more info. I don't know much about stars, but having an interest in photography I know light can play off glass in more ways than you can imagine. The fact you were looking thru two pieces of glass (interior and exterior plane windows) offers a lot of opportunities for that type of light play.

Just sayin'...

Indy,
I suspect that your theory or some other pedestrian explanation is correct.

Walter Cronkite in his autobiography relates an experience he had on a lonely New Mexico highway. He is driving alone at night and notices a glowing and shimmering UFO bobbing and weaving in same direction as he is driving. Sometimes it was behind him other times it would speed past him. He is thinking he maybe has stumbled upon the greatest news story of all time. As dawn arrives he realizes that the "UFO" was in fact the lights from his car reflecting off the overhead electric wires that ran along the road.

It wasn't a reflection off of glass. I've flown about 40 times from coast to coast, and look out the window almost constantly. I'm a very experienced observer.

The lights I saw were perfectly motionless. If they were a reflection off of the glass, they would have moved a little because my head wasn't perfectly motionless.

I witnessed something else on that flight that doesn't have anything to do with UFOs.

It happened about 15 minutes after the UFOs. Above my plane, several bright lights and a dark structure caught my eye. The first thing I thought of was a reflection off of the window glass. Then a UFO. Then I quickly realized that it was another passenger jet! It passed within 500 feet over us (it may have been as close as 200-300 feet) flying the same general direction but drifting north. In all my years of flying I've never been on a plane that passed so close to my plane.

I was going to mention it to one of the pilots when I got off the plane, but the only airline personnel standing at the door was a flight attendant.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2013 12:53AM by Hornswoggle.

Kairos said "lightNing" not lighting.

Speaking of sky phenomena...

Comet ISON, which has been billed as the new "comet of the century", emerged from behind the solar glare (from our perspective, of course) and it's considerably less bright than astronomers had hoped. So it's looking to be another Kohoutek-esque flop.

Sheri and I reserved a motel room out in Borrego Springs the weekend after Thanksgiving just so we could have a non-light polluted view of the comet, but I guess we'll just enjoy a quite weekend getaway. Or maybe we'll see ISON, but it will be unspectacular.

Oh well - it was worth the gamble. We could always cancel, but what the heck? I think we should still go.

Kairos said "lightNing" not lighting. - Sam

Oh. Thanks for the correction.

They were steady lights, indistinguishable from stars. Couldn't have had anything to do with lightning.

To anyone who's unfamiliar with the night sky, i.e. star and planet positions, (which is almost everyone) they wouldn't have even noticed them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2013 01:32AM by Hornswoggle.

Horny,
Were you looking out of the left or right side of the plane?

I said the starboard side. I said I was traveling west looking north. That means the right side.

Why do you ask?

Horny,
Because this time of year is a good time to spot Aurora Borealis. You may have made up for a lack of latitude with greater altitude.

It wasn't Aurora Borealis. I've been an amateur astronomer for 50 years. I know how Aurora Borealis looks. These were indistinguishable from stars. Aurora Borealis doesn't look anything like stars. These were steady streams of light -- as I've said indistinguishable from stars; that means they looked exactly like stars -- that lasted at least a minute before they disappeared. They were a little brighter than the three stars which comprise the handle. They just hung there, and I'm thinking "Wait a minute - this isn't right". I'm not even thinking UFO at that point. It was bizarre. When Sheri and I got home, she wondered if they could have been geo-synchonous satellites reflecting moonlight. I'm still researching that. If I'm feeling ambitious, I suppose I can dredge up my knowledge of trig and see if that theory makes sense mathematically. We have enough data. We have approximate altitudes of the plane, the alleged satellites, and the Moon. We know the angle of the moon and I know precisely where the lights appeared. We have the approximate time of day. I have enough data to say if it's in the realm of mathematical possibility that they were geo-synchronous satellites reflecting either sunlight or sunlight via the Moon.

Any ambitious grad students out there who want to tackle this?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2013 02:47AM by Hornswoggle.