SIGHTING: ROCHESTER, NEW YORK (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"In rochester ny, on the evening of june 25, 2018, around 10pm eastern time, i was stargazing, looking for satellites passing overhead. i was scanning the sky while my girlfriend and our neighbor were talking with one another. i then observed a tiny white star-like point of light begin to move in a north easterly direction, and thought i was going to watch what i immediately assumed was a satellite, travel in its orbit as far as i could until it vanished over the trees. this was not the case. the object got 2-3 times brighter, then faded to almost an invisible brownish spot. i kept my eyes on it, but lost it. a few seconds later, it appeared again along a similar path to what it was initially on, and proceeded to brighten and fade once more. this time i thought i had lost it, but it reappeared further east i’m the same patch of sky, yet now headed in a more easterly direction, and it performed the same brightening and fading. this time it was about 10-15 seconds before i observed it again, but this time it was headed south west, in the opposite direction of its previous path. it brightened again one last time, then faded out, and i didn’t observe it again. at no point in time did i think i was observing multiple objects. i felt it was the same all four times. while this event took place, i was in awe. i hadn’t seen anything move like this, at what appeared to be such a high altitude. i can only assume this object was in low earth orbit, and i do not believe it to have been a satellite, as i initially thought. i’ve witnessed numerous satellites and the iss fly over. those stay in a singular path, and do not brighten and dim periodically. the brightening and dimming was slow, and not a strobe of a conventional craft. i’ve also observed fighter jets over fort drum at night, and their afterburners during maneuvers look much different than what i observed on this night. "