SIGHTING: SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"4 adults where sitting on deck at night in Santa Barbara, in hilltop rental home. Clear night, bright stars in sky, bright crescent moon. All were taking in the stars. At 10:10pm an odd light appeared in sky, west of the moon, traveling north, about 55 degrees from horizon. At first I thought is was a shooting star, very bright and thick shooting star. But the light looked like a 'line', as if 8 or 10 stars were connected vertically and never changed in length and did not have a trail and did not fade. It was traveling at a steady pace, north in the sky, at the speed of a plane. We considered whether it might be a plane, but the steady rocking of 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock of the line of light, combined with it changing from a solid line to a series of 5 dots of light in a row (like 5 stars were traveling in line together), back to a solid line, then to a shorter line with one dot of light at the back, then 5 lights, then a solid line, while continually rocking from 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock made us consider it was something else. We had a set of binoculars on the table from watching birds in the afternoon, and I continued to watch the event through the binoculars while my 3 friends watched with their naked eyes. (We are two high level scientists and administrators at Universities, plus an artist and myself). When the light finally slowed and then settled as if a stationary star, another beam of light appeared along side it and then mimicked the same behavior (northward movement at the speed of an airplane, rocking from 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock, changed form from a solid line to a line of lights and back, with different combinations of the length of the line and the number of single lights). This ended at 10:16pm. This beam of light did not stop as a star but slowly faded, as if getting farther and farther from the earth's surface. The other star (last scene movement of the first beam) remained in the sky and didn't move.We were all discussing whether this was a set of UFOs, and truly analyzed the sighting as it was happening: size, path, pattern, time of night. We compared it to planes actually flying overhead (flashing light with one red and other white, flying horizontally in sky not vertically north) and looked carefully through the binoculars. We agreed that in all our 57 years of life (we are all close to the same age) no one has EVER scene a pattern of light like this in the sky. We were convinced this wasn't a plane. "