Sphere over San Diego, CA

The report, as filed

While walking my dog as I do almost every night I witnessed an unexplainable, for me anyway, event in the sky. It was what some might call a fire ball or orb of light, but there was something else going on as well. Before I continue let me say that I live near a military air station, as well as a smaller but busy local airport. I am accustomed to seeing all manner of aircraft, both at night and during the day, such as; Osprey (with the rotors up like a helicopter), giant military transport planes, light/personal aircraft, small personal jets, fighter planes, and helicopters of all kinds. I know very little about aviation but this was nothing I had ever seen before. This event happened in the eastern sky, and appeared to be fairly close. It lasted about 10-12 seconds total, but was already happening when I looked up. At first I thought what I was seeing was a meteor falling and burning up very close to the ground. There seemed to be debris falling and burning up in the sky like something breaking up. However, after maybe half a second or so, I noticed two things. 1) It was not falling but stationary. 2) The brightest point of light was at the top. At that point I thought maybe a firework. The debris, for lack of a better word, was almost “dripping” from the ball/orb of light. It seemed to have a liquid quality to it. Not at all like what you would associate with a firework. It almost looked like burning/melting plastic being poured or dripping/falling into the night sky. I then thought maybe it was a lantern burning up and the dripping was just thin paper on fire and swirling around, and the ball/orb of light was the heat source for the lantern. But the ball of light remained stationary and the “liquid fire” kept falling; so much that it would be hard to believe this was all paper from a lantern or that the lantern would even be able to maintain its elevation while loosing that much of its structure. The same would go for any aircraft. It was just so much fire. It also did not seem to be consistent with what I have witnessed as a flare. At this point it has been maybe 3-3.5 seconds. The origin of the “liquid fire” began to glow very bright and appeared to grow larger. It also, at this point, started to pulse alternating between a dimmer light red-orange color and a full, bright true-orange color. The “liquid fire” increased in volume and also seemed to pulse along with the ball/orb of light. It stayed this way, very bright, for a couple of 2-3 seconds and then the dripping “liquid fire” stopped. The ball/orb grew even brighter and more well defined. It pulsed a couple more times; finally sticking with the red-orange color, and shot off heading east at a very high rate of speed. I could see it for 3-4 seconds before it was too small to be visible anymore. There was no sound that I would say could be attributed to this event. This is in a suburban area and near a highway so there is ambient noise. However, it is also in a valley and air traffic is usually amplified not muffled or masked.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #109522). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.