Circle over Los Angeles/Burbank/Palmdale, CA

The report, as filed

This sighting occurred during one of my frequent weekend hikes up the Verdugo Mountains. After reaching on of the the peaks,(an altitude of 2940 feet), I reclined to rest on a concrete platform near one of the newly constructed transmission towers, I witnessed four "extremely high altitude" white circular objects. They "appeared" rather than "approached" as would be the case with any traditional aircraft. These objects were not unlike a satellite in size but unlike a satellite they did not move across the sky at the expected speed. They hovered and moved very slowly in a more or less linear formation in the direction of Palmdale and Lancaster. These objects seemed to leap frog one another at times, appearing and reappearing. They eventually moved out of sight. Five or ten minutes later, my interest peaked, three more objects appeared very near the same position, directly above me. Similarly, the three objects were small white circular lights hovering at an extremely high altitude. One of the lights was flashing, reflecting light back, unlike any of the other lights previously observed. I interpreted this as the one object to be rotating with a reflective surface. Like the other objects, these three moved away slowly and eventually out of sight. As I observed these truly unusual objects I had plenty of time to consider the possible explanations. I ruled out conventional aircraft. These things were hovering. They moved much too slow and were at too high an altitude. I ruled out satellites. They were too close to one another and satellites don't just "appear" and they don't move in mass formations. I ruled out stars. Duh. I could not, however, completely ruled out high altitude weather balloons of some kind. They were not any sort of balloons I'm aware of at the least. If they were balloons, they were huge and moving in formation with one another and one was flashing or reflecting light. With Edwards AFB so close, I am guessing these things were military in origin. The funny thing is that moments before I saw them I said to myself I wonder if I'm going to see any UFO's this time, and sure enough there they were. Pretty cool and interesting sighting for me. I'll never forget it. I just wish I had a telescope with me!

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #110256). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.