SIGHTING: ATASCADERO, CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"Spouse and self sitting on deck with miles of view from mountain location. We do this a lot and we are familiar with the view and evening sky. Spouse commented, "Look! What is that?" I followed his gaze and saw among the very sparse non-cumulous clouds a double line of very bright and very large yellow-metallic-white lights. Not blinking and not moving. The sun was down, but stars had not yet appeared, and these lights were approximately 2x or 3x larger and brighter than any stars, anyway. I could not turn my head away because I have never seen anything like this and was completely mystified. Then after only a few seconds, they just disappeared. Without moving, but seemingly "behind" the small thin cloud that was above them. We actually expected that the lights would become visible again as the cloud moved or disipated, but they were just gone. We were pretty freaked out, and a few minutes later we heard a rumbling like thunder seeming to come from south of the lights' location, but there were no storms or storm clouds nearby. As we continued to stare at the sky looking for something that would help us understand what we saw, my spouse said he thought the sky looked like there was a line in it. I didn't understand, but then a jet appeared with a trail behind it, but there was no line in the sky from the area it came from. It was like it just came into view in the middle of the sky, from "nowhere". There is commercial and other air traffic visible from our lookout, but this jet was moving much faster than a regular commercial plane - feels wierd to suggest this, but it seems like it was a miliary plane following-up on the out of normal event."