SIGHTING: VAIL, COLORADO (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"I am a MUFON FI currently inactive, and work as a security officer at a facility in Vail. I was patrolling outside at about 6:35 AM and as I often do looked up at the sky. The sky was clear and moon was visible and in the 4th quarter. Below and to the right of the moon I noticed a bright object in the sky that was too big to be a star or planet, and it was already too bright out for these to be visible. I could not see any movement at this time and took several pictures with my I-phone at 6:40AM. I then went into the building, and quickly checked the 'Heavens Above' site just in case to see if any bright star or planet was in the area, which there was not. I then went outside to the main entrance of the building and again watched the object, which still had not moved. Numerous employees and visitors were coming into the building at this time and many of them stopped and observed the object. Now we could see that the object was moving very slowly to the east. I took some more photos with my I-phone at around 6:57 AM, and continued to watch the object as I patrolled around the exterior. The object maintained a straight and level path as far as I could tell. I felt it was likely a large research balloon and several of the other witnesses thought so too. Some of these balloons get up to 120,000 feet and can be several hundred feet in diameter. Much later, around 8:00 AM I mentioned the object to two more employees and we all went outside and we could still see the object well to the SSE. The sun was well up by now. There was very little wind at ground level during the sighting. My curiosity got the better of me and later at home I checked the NUFORC site and saw that there were numerous sightings on the 13th around Santa Fe and Albuquerque NM of what turned out to be a JPL research balloon that was launched from a NASA facility in Fort Sumner NM to the east, but this balloon had come down on the 14th. There was another balloon scheduled to be launched named X-caliber but it was not in the air till the 24th. I called the Eagle County airport about 30 miles west of Vail and they directed me to the FAA. A message to their Denver office was returned by a supervisor who told me that as far as the FAA knew, there were no large balloons in the area. So I still do not know what this was for sure, but we have had a number of UFO sightings reported in the area lately, including one in Breckinridge CO on the morning of Oct. 3rd, where witnesses saw three white objects moving through the sky, at one time forming a triangle pattern and also lined up in a straight line. These UFOs then flew off at high speed. 9News/KUSA out of Denver reported on it with some video, which looked similar to the object seen over Vail. I have had several people who know me tell me about recent sightings they had in Glenwood Springs and the Vail area. I have had two good sightings of lights that suddenly blinked out on me lately, one in August and another on the 2nd of September. I cropped the photos I took and include some of them here, but its really hard to tell anything from the photos."