SIGHTING: MANIAGO, FRIULI-VENEZIA GIULIA (ITALY)
Witness Testimony
"Date: July 26 2012. Time: A little before 10pmLocation: Maniago Italy I Was sitting in the rear yard sky gazing, as I frequently enjoy doing. The sky was clear with a bright half moon lowering in the SW. Towards the South at about 40 degrees elevation I saw a bright orange/red light which looked like a greeting card image of a star with 5 or 6 rays coming off of it. I looked through 8x binoculars and instead of rays,it seemed to be surrounded by an orange haze. The haze seemed to be circular but off centered and appeared to slowly rotate. The object was slowly moving towards me(northerly). At about 70 degrees elevation it stopped moving. After another minute or so it slowly dimmed and went out. In the binoculars I could still see a faint orange haze for another 2 mins but not visible to the naked eye. I took 2 videos of the sighting using a simple Cannon A1200 PowerShot digital camera. In the videos the orange haze is not visible. The orb of light was about 5 to 8 times the diameter of Arcturus, which was visible high in the Western sky. During the first video I tried to zoom on the object. The camera is relatively new to me and I thought I screwed it up so I stopped it and started the second video. In the first video a star is visible at the beginning in the lower right. The date stamp on the camera was set to US Eastern Standard time so it shows 2:53pm which was 9:53pm local time. The entire sighting lasted about 6 minutes.PS: I was in Maniago because I am retired and I vacation here during the summers. Also as a note of interest, the US Airbase at Aviano is only about 20 miles from my location. "
