SIGHTING: ROSAMOND, CA

Witness Testimony

"Early evening glowing object seen in flight over valleyOn Sunday October 16, 2011 at 6:08 pm I was outside in my home patio waiting for the first star to appear. The sky was clear of any clouds and the sunset was receding in the western horizon. It was when I was turning and looking at the southern sky when my attention was focused on what I believed to be a star at first, low in the southern horizon. It appeared too large and too early in the evening to be any known visible star, but as I was looking at it I commented to my wife, if she thought it may be in motion. She said that it was moving towards us. I then spotted it through my binoculars and could see it was not an aircraft because it had no navigation or anti-collision beacon lights and it was a constant glowing ball of yellow light. It took me about two seconds to realize that it was not any possible aircraft of any type. I called to my wife to go inside and grab my video cam while I kept visual on the object. She returned just as the object now appear! ed closer, but maintaining a constant altitude and distance from my point of view. By the time I got it in my cam viewfinder it had already traveled half way across the eastern horizon from my vantage point. The object was moving from south to northeast and made no sound what so ever and it emitted a constant yellow-gold brightness to it, but clearly spherical in shape. On two or three occasions it slowed down to a point that it may have stopped in midair. When it continued it started moving much slower than before. I would estimate the image size to be about 1/8th of an inch diameter at arms length, traveling at the speed of a Cessna 172, (when I first spotted the object) then slowed down. It would be difficult if not impossible to tell at what distance it might have been or altitude. All I can say is that it was moving in a very straight path at about 30 degrees off eastern horizon from south to northeast. I continued video recording until I lost sight of it low in the no! rtheastern horizon. I captured 1 minute and 35 seconds recordi! ng time.My total observation time was 2 minutes 10 seconds.Light conditions outside at 6:09 pm were very low yielding very low recording image on my digital 8 video tape, but the image was captured enough to see an object moving over our community. My wife was the only witness present and she observed this with me the entire time. I checked weather conditions for wind in my location and winds were recorded at 13.8 mph WSW. Had this been a balloon or Chinese lantern it would have been very unusual for it to travel against the wind. This sighting would have been clearly visible to anyone outside having an unobstructed view to the eastern horizon as it was still light outside and the object was moving rather slow against a blue sky. I'm confident others witnessed this unusual glowing object. "