SIGHTING: CALIFORNIA CITY, CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"My two friends and I were camping for the night in Jawbone Canyon of the Mojave desert. I had brought my telescope and we had just viewed Saturn, Venus and Jupiter as well as some deep sky objects. The sky was clear and the moon was not up.There were two somewhat unusual events preceding the actual sighting that I will include in this account.First, Somewhere around 10:00pm 6/9/07 we noticed unusual bright strobe-like flashes coming from the southern horizon. We could not see the actual source of the light, only the glow in the sky. This happened at least three times.Later that evening, I caught a glimpse of something in the northern sky that appeared like a shooting star that traveled about a quarters diameter held at arm's length. It then stopped and shot off as a red streak at a new angle so that the entire flight path resembled a V with the object coming in from the top left, stopping as a 'star' at the bottom of the V then accelerating like a red laser to the top right and disappearing.Because the event happened so fast I was not able to look directly at the object and only made a passing comment to my friends that I had seen something odd.Around 12:20am Sunday morning, something relatively high in the northern sky pulsed with a VERY bright white light (out-shining even Venus). The pulse was bright enough for all three of us to see it peripherally and train our gaze on it.The object appeared stationary and as the initial pulse faded, the center of the object became a VERY red point of light enveloped in white light. Within one second, this point of red light began emitting 'beams' of red and white laser-like light (mostly white beams, I only saw one red beam). These beams came to a stop as tiny white points of light. These 'baby' stars (at least four or five of them) then began to pulse very bright white light all around the 'mother' star until all faded and the portion of the sky became ordinary again.Again, all this took place within an area of the sky that could be covered with a quarter at arms length. This was also quite possibly the exact same location of the first object I saw.The impression was that the object/objects were very far away, at least outside the atmosphere. One friend thought it may have been a star exploding into tiny pieces (though I explained that supernovas are very rare and probably could not be seen with the naked eye). I had absolutely no idea what it could be. I have observed the night sky for years. I have seen satellites, planets, space stations, rockets, you name it. Whatever this was, it was very unusual.I was sure that the 'Mother' star was still visible but back to a normal subdued radiance. I grabbed the Celestron 'Sky Scout' and determined that the star in question was Polaris, the north star.I was certain that the performance would repeat, and I stayed up for at least another half hour watching the same place in the sky but the desert air was dry and windy, my contacts began to bother me and eventually I had to close my eyes and sleep."