Sphere over Midland, TX

The report, as filed

My wife and daughter saw a strange bright light in the NW sky over my house and were looking at it through binoculars, they came in the house and got me to look at it and I definitely saw a very bright light in the sky at about a 40 degree angle in the northwest night sky. At first I thought it might be the International Space Station which we have seen before but after looking at it through binoculars I could tell it was definitely not. I looked at it through my binoculars and it seemed to be a very bright cluster of lights in a the shape of a sphere but it was only halfway illuminated by what seemed to be anywhere from 30 to 50 very bright individual lights. As I watched the object through the binoculars it started changing shapes and colors. It would vary in size and shape from a half illuminated sphere to what seemed to me to look like a lobster claw to a hand to back to a half sphere to a full sphere black with only exactly half illuminated. The colors a! round it changed from white only to some green around the edges and then some red around the edges. While we were viewing it I called the Midland Police department to report it and they gave me the phone number of the National Weather Service here in Midland located at our airport. I took about 20 pictures of the object on my smartphone and my daughter took some pictures of it on her smartphone also. After looking at the pictures, they don't really show the shape as we saw it but there are definitely some strange images almost looking like a nebula or a blurred shape with different colors of light. There was a local professional baseball game going on at the stadium due west of my house and at the end of the game there was some fireworks set off but the object was almost like it was northwest of us and the game and the illuminated part of the sphere was on the opposite side facing the game. This object was definitely not part of the fireworks show, my daughter and I saw the! object higher and further northwest of the game and fireworks! show. M y neighbor across the alley was in his back yard along with his wife and I called them over to look at what we were looking at and they saw the light too and both of them looked through my binoculars and witnessed the object and it changing shapes and colors. We watched it for about an hour and it kept getting a little lower on the horizon but it was not really moving with the stars, it was really not seemed to be moving at all, just getting lower and lower until it finally disappeared beyond what we could see above the tree line from the balcony of my second story balcony. We could see the big dipper in the night sky next to it to the south but this object did not move with it and it appeared to be much closer than any star, it seemed to be in our atmosphere. My binoculars are not that great but it was very clear to all of us. I am going to contact our local TV stations tomorrow morning even though it Sunday morning now and see if there was anyone else who witnessed this ob! ject also. My pictures are very interesting but limited to the quality of my phone camera which I had on full zoom. Still there was something there and we all saw it. Just wanted to report this to some site tonight and googled your site and this is the only place I have reported this too online. I'm not looking to get in or on the news just wanted to see if anyone else saw this object tonight. In my opinion this was definitely not man made. I am not a pilot but have flown all of my life in our own family planes and commercially and know enough to know what I am looking at in the sky and night sky. I can send images of the object if you would like them, I will try to send the images from my phone to the link below but they are kind of blurry and my phone will only let me send like two at a time. I will save the images on my phone and if you would like to see more then contact me and I will be glad to send all of them to as long as your company or entity won't try to commercially try to sell or reproduce them without my permission.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #118397). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.