SIGHTING: BUENA VISTA, COLORADO (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"My wife and I camped at Weston Pass Campground Thursday night, Oct 2. Early in the still-dark early morning hours of Friday, Oct 3, I'm guessing about 5 am, I awoke to stare at a light in the sky that looked like a bright star descending through the thin tree branches. I was sleeping in the back of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, looking out the side window pretty much north, perhaps slightly NNE in direction. The star descended perhaps 1/3 of the window height from my vantage point, hovered still for a couple seconds, then descended smoothly but quickly about the same vertical distance a second time. This time it stayed hovering in the sky for another minute or two while I stared at it carefully to see if it was going to move again. It didn't and I went back to sleep. I figured the sighting was perhaps a trick of perception since I was just waking up. I had the impression it was putting on a show for me to observe, but what are the odds? Anyway, I was the only witness, so it didn't seem like a significant sighting to report, but I did describe it to my wife when we woke up. However, when we arrived home later in the day we discovered that there was a sighting early today in Breckenridge. (We left the campground early and actually drove through Breckenridge about 9:40 am, although we didn't see anything then.) I had taken a GPS reading at our camp site... 39.07745,-106.13648. Looking on Google Maps, Breckenridge is located just a little east of due north of our camp site, exactly the direction I was looking when I saw the light. It appeared to be in the far distance, and very easily could have been near Breckenridge at the time, although that's just a guess of course. While writing this report I was guessing an elevation angle of perhaps 20 degrees, but after measuring from my head location to the window and doing the math, the top of the window elevation angle is about 60 degrees. So my guess is the light descended straight down from 60 deg down to about 45 deg in a couple seconds, hovered there for maybe two more seconds, then descended smoothly but quickly on down to perhaps 20 or 30 deg elevation angle, where it stayed for the next full minute while I contemplated what I had just seen. The direction angle of my view (just a tad east of north) was deduced from Google maps satellite view, the angle of our parking spot, and the direction I was looking across the inside of the parked vehicle. I wasn't going to report this sighting, but it might provide additional evidence for whatever was seen in Breckenridge early today. At the time I'm writing this, 9News only reports three shiny objects in the early morning sky above that town."