SIGHTING: ALLONS, TENNESSEE (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"My wife and I were at Dale hollow Lake enjoying the view of the stars provided by the clear rural skies. We have a boat on the lake and stargazing is one of our favorite activities. The area lies along the flight path of commercial jets & they are pretty common. Once in a while we see tiny unblinking starlike objects moving from north to south or vice versa that we believe to be satellites. On this particular night, June 15 2015, sometime between 9 and 10 pm I was looking almost straight up at the Constellation Cygnus the Swan. Just to the northeast of the constellation I saw a moving unblinking light. Not particularly bright or moving rapidly so if I had not been looking at the area I would probably have missed it. I pointed it out to my wife as a possible satellite. We watched together as it moved in a northwesterly direction. Just a few seconds after first sight, it rapidly brightened to become the brightest object in the heavens. as bright or brighter than the full moon. A very unusual blue white hue like an electrical arc welder or the bluish light of an led bulb. I had the impression of a spotlight pointing directly at us. It remained bright for just a couple of seconds, the faded to its former level of brightness. It continued on the same course as before, then faded from view. I have some experience star gazing and one explanation I can think of is a meteor that skipped off the upper atmosphere, becoming briefly bright and then continuing back out of the atmosphere and fading. I've seen many meteors, including some that appear to be aflame. I must say that the level of brightness and the unusual blue white color make that explanation unsatisfactory to me. The other explanation is a commercial jet briefly turning on its landing lights. Again, the extreme altitude it would have been flying would, I believe, have made the light much dimmer, and again the blue white shade was so unusual as to make this explanation unsatisfactory to me also. Also, the light never blinked like a typical commercial aircraft. "