SIGHTING: DELTA, COLORADO (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"It was about 9:15 pm on 23 august, 2014, when I stepped out of my shop and stood on the stoop to observe the weather. It had been raining with low, heavy clouds forming a relatively low ceiling, and no stars showing whatever. As I looked around at the black sky, I suddenly notice a moderately bright, steady (not blinking), orange light emerging into view from behind the tall trees towering over my neighbor's house. As I was wondering what it could be, a second, twin orange light appeared from behind the treetops, lower than, and slightly behind the first. The two lights seemed to move together, either two separate craft in precise formation, or as two lights on a single (huge) aircraft. I could NOT see any hint or indication of a craft(s) or vessel(s); just two separate lights in the sky which may or may not have had structure between them. The two lights were very large as compared to running lights on planes or helicopters, and separated by at least two or three degrees. To my mind, this relatively large separation between these twin lights, assuming they are two lights on one vessel, indicate a very gargantuan vessel. It just seems to me that two separated lights on any conventional aircraft would appear very close together from ANY perspective. Anyway, as I watched, they moved steadily, coming from approx. east-southeast, and moving towards west-northwest, perhaps with a curved flight path, or perhaps the curvature was an artifact of my point-of-view. At any rate, as the lights appeared to be moving towards the northwest, or so, and approaching the Grand Mesa, the upper light seemed to disappear into the clouds while the lower light continued towards the Grand Mesa. It was then that I notice a second pair of steady, orange lights, identical to the first pair, cruising from the east-southeast and following the first pair towards Grand Mesa. I looked back towards the first set of lights and discovered that they had vanished, either disappeared into the clouds over the Mesa, or simply moved out of view. I looked back towards the second set of lights and noticed a third pair coming from farther back. I walked around to my front yard and looked to the eastern horizon, where I saw three additional, individual orange lights coming. These three lights were separate lights strung out in a procession and following the first three pairs in single file. From the time they appeared over the horizon until they seemed to pass me and head for the Grand Mesa, each light took about two minutes to cover the distance....maybe fifty miles overland??. The whole sighting took maybe fifteen minutes and I watched perhaps as many as fourteen lights in total make a convoy across my sky (three pairs and perhaps eight singles. It seemed like something out of a sci-fi movie, to be sure. These lights moved in a STATELY, steady fashion, straight line or gradual but uniform curve. The tandem lights moved as if they were two lights on a single craft, and all the lights, pairs and single ones, moved at the same rate and apparently the same trajectory. The night was profoundly silent and the low cloud cover would have reflected the noise of engines/rotors. The lights were unarguably orange and steady, and presented a visible disk; that is, they were not point like, as the stars are. And aircraft running lights would appear "point-like" unless the aircraft were close enough to hear very easily. (or it would needs be a very quiet aircraft). A scientist with the proper instrument could have measured the apparent diameter of these lights, I'm quite sure. Therefore, it seems to me that either the lights were very big and distant, or the aircraft were very close and amazingly quite. I mean, your neighbor's porch light appears as a disk, or a patch of light with a diameter one can "see". But at even a mile away, this same porch light seems more like a point, more like a star. And these things were at least a mile away from my location, probably more like five miles, and so they should have appeared point-like (or been very big). As for their speeds across the sky, well......If they were close enough that the size of their running lights were like the neighbor's porch light, then they were flying way too slow for a fixed wing aircraft of the sort we know of. And a VTOL would make so very much more noise than I heard...which was none. If they were far enough away that their apparent speed made sense, then they had huge running lights which follow no convention I've ever heard of (most are red, green, or white, I think, and most of them blink or strobe, far as I know) I've never heard of, or remember seeing steady, orange aircraft lights. Now, a helicopter can fly very slowly and be very close, presenting a large running light.....but where was the noise a helicopter makes? And even if it was only a fleet of silent helicopters, well, even that is remarkable, isn't it? And why the orange lights? United Nations designation??? I'm thinking now, that if you take a number two pencil and look at the end of the eraser at arms-length, that would approximate the apparent diameter of these orange lights I saw. Maybe they were slightly smaller than that, but certainly not point-like, and nothing like any running lights I've ever witnessed. So what were they? Def-definitely orange! Yeah! Def-DEFinitely orange! And def-definitely like a convoy, or a procession. Def-definitely! Anyone else seen them? Puzzled in Paonia. "