SIGHTING: SANTA FE, NM

Witness Testimony

" Inverted tear drop shaped brightly illuminated slow moving object sighted over 3 1/2 hours.My wife and I first spotted the craft while on the shoulders of Mt. Picacho, observing a very bright large white object which seemed to move very slowly, almost imperceptibly. This was at 5:00 pm in a deep blue sky; it looked something like a bright planet, but much too large for that. As we observed it repeatedly on our climb down we speculated it could possibly be someone in a large paraglider who had been able to catch an updraft to a very high altitude, but it hovered so long in a nearly motionless state that that would have been most unlikely. Hours later, at a few minutes after 8 pm, we observed it again from our home east of the plaza in Santa Fe. It had moved a few miles west during that time, and seemed to be directly over the central area of the city. Our only magnification was a pair of opera glasses. It appeared to have an inverted tear drop shape, almost like a balloon (spherical but with a small conical projection underneath), but without! a distinct basket, and was very brightly illuminated, as though internally lit with a very powerful light which seemed to have no distinct source--like a brilliant, radiant glow. My wife states she was taken aback by its “otherworldly" beauty. A good description would have been an inverted tear drop shaped light bulb with faint horizontal bands. Checking back on it at 8:45 pm, it had completely disappeared from the sky. I was sorry not to have witnessed how it disappeared. Its motion had been so slow I’d expected it to still be visible and was surprised at its sudden disappearance.((NUFORC Note: We suspect that the object was a hig-altitude, helium-filled balloon. One was reported to have been released from Ft. Sumner in New Mexico. http://www.topix.com/city/fort-sumner-nm/2014/09/enormous-balloon-will-carry-black-hole-hunting-telescope-aloftPD)) "