SIGHTING: FAIRFIELD, IA

Witness Testimony

"5 lights in shape of oval traveled from southwest to northeast sky which looked to outline one object at 3:16 AM.At 3:16 to 3:17 AM, I went outside before going to bed, and within a moment I noticed the sky was clear and saw what I thought were airplane lights moving in the sky. I then noticed there was an oval or ellipse shape formed by what looked to be 5 or more lights moving through the sky. The size of the lights were like small, not particularly brilliant stars, but bright enough that their movement against a dark clear sky were apparent. There could have been more than 5 stars but with the small size and distance and movement I was only able to count 5.This movement caught my attention immediately. I saw the movement was slow and steady. I went quickly into the house and shouted to my brother to come immediately. He came out and also watched the object.The Pleiades were to the south of this object and higher in the sky than the object. The object moved on a track toward the northeast horizon. If I were to draw a line to track its trajectory backward, if it had traveled a straight line; then it started west and to the mid heaven side of the Pleiades.There was a notable gut sense the object was very large and quite a distance away, higher in the sky than perhaps one might think. But, there was no visual reference to verify this sense.We are in Southeast Iowa in a small town of 8000. If there were no city lights we would have had a better view.We watched to see if any star lights were obscured by its passing over them, but the lights of the object became dimmer as it traveled closer to the horizon was such that we never saw any stars crossed and we lost view of the object before it got low enough in the sky to have its view blocked by the trees.I thought of calling the police to report this, it being so unusual; then decided not to bother as the object had passed. I reported this sighting to my ex-wife and a friend by email so that I would have a time stamp to record the time; then thought to look on the net to see if other had seen an object like this.So far I have not seen a picture which matches what we saw, but only looked on the net for a couple minutes.We are occasional sky watchers by habit when we go outside on occasion, and have many a time observed satellites on occasion. This was new and different. The low side of the ellipse was on the left, on the north side, rising to the right (south) as in the picture below. No sound was heard.I am 55 and my brother is 49. We were not under the influence of any drug, but we did have a half beer each about 7 hours earlier, which surely did not cause this strange observation. Quite interesting.((NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD))"