SIGHTING: CARLOS, MN

Witness Testimony

"Brilliant red star like object in the skyJuly 5th, 2013 My son and I were traveling west bound on a county road in Douglas County MN, north of Alexandria at 10:45 pm. While at a stop sign we noticed a red object in the sky directly in front of us. This object was star like in appearance and about the size of a large star. I’m not sure how far away it was but it wasn’t close to us, the best I can guess it was about as high as a commercial jet would be and at a 45 degree angle. The reason it caught our attention is the color. I have never seen a star like object with this type of color. It was a brilliant red color with a tint of orange, but more on the red side. This object didn’t appear to be moving and because of our curiosity we continued west to find a better spot to pull off of the side of the road and look at it. It is wooded on both sides of this road and by the time we found a spot where we could get a good look at it, it began to fade and within a couple of seconds it disappeared. We continued west and began to talk about something else and my son said, “There it is”. It was about 4 to 5 minutes between the time it disappeared and the time it reappeared. We quickly found a spot to pull over, stopped and got a good look at it. We tried to take a picture with my cell phone, but it didn’t work. My son took our binoculars out and said that it looked like a regular star, but it was bright red. Before I was able to look at it through the binoculars, it again disappeared. We never saw it again. Total good observation time was about 2 minutes.I had my private pilot’s license a number of years ago, I am an amateur astronomer and am reporting exactly what we saw. It was not an airplane, any type of fireworks or anything that I can explain. I have seen many satellites before, the International Space Station, all types of aircraft and it was none of the above. Being a person who has looked through a telescope (6” Meade reflector) many times, it wasn’t Mars! To sum it up, we saw this thing twice, it disappeared twice. It was bright red, red-orange. It didn’t appear to move. There were no clouds in the sky. Being a person who does not make stuff up, I can’t say it was some type of space craft, but was out of the ordinary. Thanks "