SIGHTING: OTTAWA, ILLINOIS (UNITED STATES)
Witness Testimony
"Received a call from my friend mike in morris, il. around 6:00pm on tues sept 24. he stated there was a weird white light in the sky, large and hanging out above his house. i went outside to see if i could see it but i could not. i came inside for approximately 20-25 mins to do some housework. went back outside and saw the light to the east of my home in ottawa, il. i came inside and got my orion sky quest 6 dobsonian telescope and set it up to look at the object. with my eyes i could see what looked like a large star or planet. through my lens i saw a circle of lights with either 1 or 2 bright large lights in the top center of the circle. the lights were white and bright. i have several lens' for my telescope so i changed them quickly to try to get a more close up view. at the time there were people at the vfw across from where i live. the commander, daryl, came over and viewed the object through the telescope. he didn't know what it was. i called my wife at 6:29 and told her about it. she came home with our daughter and we proceeded to look at it through my 25mm lens. my wife, lisa and daughter, madison began trying to take video footage of the object with their samsung j7 crown smartphones. this had to be done through the lens so it was hard to get an extremelyl clear shot, but we were able to see it and capture it. this went on for over an hour. 3 ladies from the vfw came over to view it too. the object, as the sun was going down, changed from brilliant white lights to orange colored lights. the ladies and my wife agreed that it looked like a pumpkin. the object did not appear to be moving, however the lights seemed to pulse. we have all used my telescope to view the night sky, planets and more. when viewing a planet or the moon we have to constantly adjust the position of the telescope to keep track of the object we are viewing. in this instance the object was not moving and we hardly had to adjust to keep it in view. that tells me that this object was in our atmosphere, not in space. we were able to view the object till approximately 7:30 through the scope, however as the sun began to set the object's lights began to fade out. my daughter witnessed a light at the top "fall off" to the left (if you are looking at it) and hover below it. i believe we have video of this appearance, however, it was getting dark and the object was now appearing as a shadow in the sky and no longer visible to the naked eye. we posted 3 of the many videos we took on youtube and showed some of the stills we were able to get when my wife put the videos on her computer and took screenshots of some of the clearer frames we were able to get. this object was able to be seen through the entire time in the sky by my friend in morris, my mother, shirley in marseilles and my family in ottawa. responses to the posts showed others also saw the light(s), some saw a craft from braidwood to ottawa and further east. the videos have provided a good timeline of events and as i was talking on the phone with my mother and cousin my wife was recording the description of what we were all seeing. some suggested it may have been saturn. my wife looked up saturn's position in the sky and it was in the south east at that time, this object was directly east. we have all seen saturn through my telescope and it is powerful enough to actually see the planet and ring colors when it is close enough to view. this was not saturn. i'm attaching some of the videos we took from both phones as well as some of the blown up shots we got from the videos. the "light" in the background is the mirror at the bottom of the scope. it's hard to take a video with the camera of the cellphone put up against the eyepiece of the telescope but we managed."
