SIGHTING: HAVELOCK NORTH, HAWKE'S BAY (NEW ZEALAND)

Witness Testimony

"Awoke at 4.30a.m to a moonless, stunningly clear, dark morning with astonishing clarity showing complete view of all stars and planets. After a lifetime of following astronomy, probably best viewing conditions I've seen.My house is several kilometres from the Hawke's Bay coast, eastern seaboard of North Island, New Zealand. Was looking at Orion's belt through field glasses when I saw a light to my right, clearly visible over the roof of my house, glowing red-orange. Much larger than a star, larger than a planet, but was clearly much closer to earth - I suspect it was easily within our atmosphere.It was stationary and in a rough oval shape, slightly rounded at each end, although I could see no structure, simply glowing light which was very slightly fuzzy at the edges. Within a few seconds the object increased in size by perhaps 30 per cent and turned a light green, almost peppermint green. A few seconds later it reverted to its original colour and size, and then several seconds later reverted to the larger size and green colour.At this point the object shot off at an unbelievable speed, heading north and slightly upwards. It disappeared within two seconds. I looked back to the position it was in when I first saw it, and observed three (perhaps four) 'dashes'- dark, burnished gold colour - which disappeared very quickly.The light/object left no other traces of its existence. There was no sound at any stage during this brief sighting. The distance it travelled from its original stationary position to the point in the sky that it disappeared was approximately 3.5 hand spans (adult male hand).I have been a journalist and technology writer all my working life and am now in my late 50s. My profession has trained me to spot anything unusual and to simply observe without rushing to judgement.I stood for at least 15 seconds going over what I had seen. I have no explanation for it in terms of any technology that I have seen or read about.It was not a trick of the light; the object was under control of some kind. My eyesight is excellent and as I mentioned earlier, I have been watching stars and planets since I was around 6 years old. I have seen a lightning bolt at a shockingly close distance, I've seen coloured ball-lightning, forked and sheet-lightning and I can readily identify most of our planets, stars, constellations etc. I've tracked the Space Station and many satellites, I've also seen meteors, one of which tracked an astonishing red and orange trail through the night sky. I have never seen anything like this object before.One last thing in relation to the trail of 'dashes' (or hyphens as I originally called them) which remained in the sky for about three or four seconds after the object disappeared. About three weeks after this event a documentary was screened on our local cable TV company, Sky TV which dealt in general with UFOs. I hope you don't stop reading at this point, but they had Bob Lazar detailing the broad varieties of UFO sightings made around the world and his words, to the best of my memory were: 'And there are coloured objects which hover in the sky and then fly off at incredible speeds, leaving dashes in their wake."I nearly fell off my settee. This description exactly replicated what I saw, and it is the reason why I am filling in this report. I hope all this is of some value. Best wishes.Graham "