SIGHTING: GAINESVILLE, FL

Witness Testimony

"Ball of bright orange fire moving low across night skyAt 9:23 pm EST, June 7, 2013, my husband and I were sitting on our patio in Gainesville, FL, looking at the stars. It was a fairly clear night. Suddenly we both saw a bright orange object move low across the sky, from SW to NE. It was flying lower than a plane or helicopter. It seemed like an active flame (as in a fireplace) contained in some sort of transparent round, or cylindrical container. The fire was extremely bright orange in color. My first thought was that it was some sort of roman candle, but there was no sound at all, and the object kept moving across, not down. There was no tail. We guess it was moving 35-40 miles per hour, and seemed to be about 200-300 feet above us. The size, to our eyes seemed to be about about 1 foot x 2.5 feet in size, at the distance from which we saw it. It was low enough that I worried it would set fire to one of the tall pines. After about 7-10 seconds, it went behind trees so we couldn’t see it any more. Neither my husband nor I have ever seen anything like this. I might describe it as a sort of flaming orange Japanese lantern, except the orange flame was intensely bright, and like fire, not an electric light. "