As reported

Sphere over Cannon Beach, OR

A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.

The report, as filed

My wife and I observed a very large extremely bright orange, glowing orb that tracked north to south some distance off the ocean shore paralleling the coastline. The surface of it looked like a molten liquid, except for a relatively faint difficult to see grey shape in the center. This molten appearance reminded me of a NASA photo of the surface of the Sun except that, unlike the Sun, the edge of it was very sharply defined. The bottom of it emitted a reddish color. It remained level at relatively low altitude for about 15 to 20 seconds and then pulled up at sharp angle and rose at a tremendous rate of climb; it momentarily appeared to stop and then continued to climb rapidly. The light was so bright that it illuminated very high thin cirriform clouds in the dark sky as it passed through their altitude. It made no audible sound. This took place approximately ninety minutes after sunset. I hold a commercial pilot license and previously worked as a certified flight instructor. I now work as a technical analyst in aerospace engineering.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #113101). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.

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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2014-08-21 → 2014-09-07

From the same sky

Related entries

May 14, 2023 · 9:40 PM · DISK

Cannon Beach, OR

I was taking a picture of the sunset, and noticed the darker cloud/craft. I zoomed in and saw two more. Then I decided to take a video and one of them appeared too quickly to be a cloud. They faded away faster than a cloud would also. My phone was acting unusal and zooming more rapidly than usual. I take sunset pictures each night when I am at work. I got scared and stopped filming. I have a couple video clips I could share but they are too big to attach. My coworker at the hotel is filling this out because the video is so compelling. Please reach out.

October 2, 2015 · 11:25 PM · SPHERE

Cannon Beach, OR

An Orange Sphere of intense and steady light – My wife and I were at Cannon Beach, Oregon, for the weekend. At 11:25 PM PT, Friday, October 2nd 2015, I was looking due west over a row of beachfront motel units. I noticed a very bright, steady, orange light out over the ocean. The moon was not in the hemisphere, and there were no noticeable clouds. The day had clear skies. Winds were calm. When I opened the sliding door, I noticed that the light was slowly moving towards the east, towards the shore, at an even speed and steady altitude. I would guess it was above a thousand feet. The light was not a pin-point, but a distinct round shape. I looked for a cowling shadow or surface reflection, but could see none. The round light was intense, but not like a searchlight, there was no beam effect. There was no strobe or flutter effect, either. I was able to catch a smartphone video of 56 seconds. The video shows some strobing, but that is mostly due to the auto-focus of the phone trying to maintain focus on a light source in the dark. At 3 seconds in I zoom to maximum, hence the greater distortion and apparent change in size. At 31 seconds the light moves behind the row of motel units where we were staying. The jostling is me stepping out onto the patio deck to capture a few more seconds. I could not tell how fast it was moving since there was no background reference. From the angle shift (+30 degrees at first sighting, facing west, to +60 degrees south-southeast) and the duration, someone with trigonometric skills could roughly figure out the height and speed. There was no sound, above the sound of the ocean waves. The engine roar sound on the video seems loud, but to my ear it was a distant rumble of surf. Helicopters make a distinctive sound at the beach, whether Coast Guard or otherwise. This was not the light of a helicopter or conventional plane. There were no other lights, no navigational lights, and no other bright lights in the sky for the next half hour. Earlier in the day, around 5 PM PT, my wife and I had seen two drones flying near Haystack Rock. They had very small white beacon lights and moved in irregular patterns and changed altitude from time to time. The video isn’t very good, but it is a few seconds (56 seconds) of 'interesting' light.

August 31, 2014 · 9:30 PM · SPHERE

Cannon Beach, OR

My wife and I observed a very large extremely bright orange glowing orb that tracked south some distance off the ocean shore paralleling the coastline. The surface of it looked like molten steel except for a very faint difficult to see grey shape in the center. There was a vertically moving wave like appearance to the surface. This molten appearance reminded me of a NASA photo of the surface of the Sun except that, unlike the Sun, the edge of it was very sharply defined. The bottom of it emitted a slightly more reddish tint. It remained level at relatively low altitude above the horizon for about 30 seconds and then pulled up at sharp angle and rose at a tremendous rate of climb; it momentarily appeared to slow and then continued to climb rapidly. It was so bright that it illuminated very high thin cirriform, noctilucent, clouds in the dark otherwise clear sky as it passed through their altitude. It made no audible sound. This took place approximately an hour and a half after sunset.

April 25, 2014 · 10:00 PM · LIGHT