SIGHTING: HOUSTON, TEXAS (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"Just before 11 pm on the night of the recent lunar eclipse, january 21, i stepped outside the front door of my building, in the montrose neighborhood of houston, to gaze at and try to photograph the waxing eclipse playing across the moon's face, which was moderately high in the eastern sky but far from directly overhead. though it was early in the eclipse duration, the sunset on the moon was already casting the earth in a ruddy glow. there were only very high clouds moving slowly west to east, and they were also ruddy in the moon's strange light. millions of stars were visible, even through the thin reddish clouds. it was remarkable, because even with a new moon or no moon, you never see so many in the city any more. the optical interference of the red moonlight with the blue atmosphere seemed to be acting like blue-blocker sunglasses. just saying, it was exceptionally clear. an awning over the building door blocked out the entire southern half of my sky. i was looking straight up at the stars, shading my eyes from the direct moonlight with one hand to see them even better. the disk emerged from behind the awning, traveling northward in a straight line, making only one change in direction from true north to slightly more north-northwest, before disappearing beyond close, tall trees and buildings. the object was a perfect disk shape, from my point of view directly below it. it was dark, rusty brown with no running lights, beams, glows, or windows, and no visible propulsion effects. it seemed like it might be a pretty dark object simply reflecting the reddish light pollution from the ground, though i could be wrong about this. there was some indefinable detailing on the disk, just variations in the surface texture really. i couldn't get a handle on how big or how far away. if it was pretty close it would have been at least 100 ft. across, but in the unusually clear conditions it could have been much bigger and farther away, or smaller and closer. it didn't get much smaller as it traveled away from me. i don't know if that means it was big and high up or small and close to the ground. i took my eyes off of it to look at my phone as i tried to pull up the camera app. the phone wouldn't respond to touch or button commands. i kept trying, and the camera finally came up as the disk was getting close to the horizon, but when i framed and snapped a pic of the disk, i was kicked out of the app. so no pic. i was not frightened, dumbfounded, or incredulous. i saw disks of the same apparent size about 20 years ago, also traveling due north over houston in a straight line, but during the day. i was excited of course."