SIGHTING: FREMONT, CALIFORNIA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"At approximately 10:40 pm on the night of july 22nd 2018 i was out front of a house we were sitting for a friend, retrieving items from our car. i have been watching the sky for several nights as the planets were progressing across the ecliptic and had photographed the venus conjunct moon several nights before. we have been going out to photograph sunsets for the last several weeks. the home we are taking care of has an unobstructed view of the sky facing east across to west, so a good place to watch planetary movements. this night mars was coming up and was so bright i at first thought it to be an inbound flight to sfo or oakland. we soon realized it was indeed mars but bright and very obviously reddish but low from the ecliptic plane so as to not seem to be a planet. as i was closing the door of the car front driver side i looked up at the sky as i always do to see the stars and moon but at once noticed three bright stars about the magnitude of jupiter. they were stationary so i did not think they were aircraft but were in an equilateral triangle facing up. my first thought was some type of conjunction i had somehow missed, but before i could check my thoughts i noticed they started to fade. but not evenly at first. the lower left point started first then the other two quickly followed in what was a 3-4 second fade making it obvious these were not stars, aircraft or other known phenomena i could identify. they were stationary the whole time and faded without moving. i’ve had many other similar fading stars over the years i have not reported but never three at once so clearly seen. i remained at the door of the car with door open looking at them and trying to block the glare of the moon to see if i could see anything in the area they were, but nothing. i went in for some small binoculars to scan the area but was thwarted by too much ambient light from security lights on the house so after a short time i decided to bring up my star application and record the time, position and event in written and graphic form so i could make a report. i had a feeling this was some “occasion” as i am very educated in the phenomena and warned my wife we could have a visitation tonight. "