SIGHTING: SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"At 4:45 am, 11/24/19, i looked out the window to the east at the clear, starry sky when i noticed that a lower star was moving steadily in a line right to left (south to north). as the light completed its track across the open sight-line between two trees, another light appeared from where the first one had appeared and followed the first light in a straight line. over the next minute 6 more lights followed. when i realized this was ongoing, i grabbed my binoculars and ran outside to a better vantage point. binoculars did not reveal any physical characteristics of the lights, just made the white stars appear bigger. with the binoculars i was able to follow the lights forward/to the north as they passed behind the trees as the trees have no leaves. i was also able to look through the trees to the south in the direction from which the lights were coming so that i was probably looking at a line of lights 4 miles long in total. this went on for about 8 minutes. additionally, while i was facing east watching this line of lights (about 5 minutes into the whole event), the big dipper was overhead to the north (at about 75 degrees above the north horizon). what appeared to be a common meteor (long white tail) came out of the sky at or near the dipper and streaked to the east terminating, to my view, right at the line of northerly traveling "star" lights. the line of lights ended after about 8 minutes. i stayed outside watching for another 10-15 minutes, got cold and went inside to write down my observations. at 5:15 i went back outside to take another look. after a few minutes another meteor flashed across the sky but this time the meteor was off my right shoulder in the southern sky (whereas the first meteor was in this north sky though both were high in the sky). this second meteor did not travel all the way to the spot where the string of lights had been as the first meteor had done though it was headed in that direction when it disappeared. another 10 minutes went by when i noticed, directly overhead and very, very high in the sky a point of light that was moving. to be clear, this was very different from the string of lights which seemed low in the sky (1000'-2000'). this point of light looked exactly like a star in size and color but it moved across the entire sky in 12 seconds. a commercial airliner would take at least a minute to do the same, probably more. the direction of travel was northeast and it appeared that its direction might be convergent with the path flown by the string of lights as if they were headed to the same place though this object was much higher. i went back inside to write down my observations. ten minutes or so later at 5:45 i went to the window one more time. just as i got to the window, there was a large airplane flying right overhead of my house heading due east in a path perpendicular to the path flown by the string of lights. i identified the object as a plane because i could see its flattish shape and could clearly see flashing lights on either side of a steady light suggesting to me two flashing wing lights with a steady fuselage light in between. i was looking at the back end of the "plane" as it flew directly away from me. i was excited to see a plane so i could catalogue just how different the plane was in contrast to the lights i had been seeing. i went outside with my binoculars to get a better look. i could still make out the three distinct lights on the craft with my naked eye, though i watched the craft with my binoculars until it disappeared behind the mountainous horizon. though i was convinced that this was a commercial plane at first, something was odd. there is no flight path for jets where i live which is right in salt lake city. and , though the plane was close enough for me to distinguish separate lights, it was totally silent. a jet (or a cessna) would have made a racket in those super quiet pre-dawn conditions"