SIGHTING: BOISE, IDAHO (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"Sitting outside on thursday afternoon around 5:15pm and glanced up to the southwest sky as a turboprop horizon/alaska airlines "cigar plane" was making an approach to the boise airport. as i watched the plane we noticed a bright orb in the sky. i was puzzled at what we were looking at. it was stationary for a good 20 minutes...The size when we first started watching it was the size of a circle with a 1/16" to 1/8" diameter if you drew it on paper. it appeared to be at least a couple of thousand feet up or more. i went in the house and grabbed 2 sets of binoculars to get a better look. it was a sphere, reflecting light off of the right side from the sun, and was shiny but not really metallic looking. it was absolutely round. we thought it could be a weather balloon- but most weather balloons are more teardrop shaped...Tried calling the boise national weather service to see if they had any balloons up at that time...But they closed at 5pm. we discussed if it was a planet possibly- but the way the sun was reflecting off of it- it had to be in the atmosphere. at around 5:30 it started very slowly moving to the northwest...And by 6:10 it had starting gaining in elevation. we watched it until around 6:15 when it went behind our trees and had climbed to a high enough altitude that it was almost out of site. i watched it with binoculars for around 10-15 minutes. i never saw any rippling in the exterior (like a balloon) and never saw any rotation or movement of the orb shape like a balloon would have as it is buffeted by wind. it also stayed in the viewfinder of my binoculars without having to move them (indicating a stationary position)for quite a while. i checked the wind direction at the time of the viewing from the national weather service- and the winds were out of the nw during this event. the orb ultimately moved from sw to nw. not sure what the wind direction was at higher altitude on thursday... -we tried taking some pics from a cell phone. those are attached. if you zoom in you can kind of see the orb shape. we attempted the photos towards the end of the sighting when the orb had gained elevation and was moving away slowly to the nw. i guess it could have been some kind of balloon- but i have never seen a balloon stay stationary for so long..."