Sphere over Tampa, FL

The report, as filed

Late Tuesday night, July 21, 2015, around 11:30 pm to 11:45 pm I arrived home and got out of my car and across the field above the tree line in the low to mid part of the night sky I saw five orange/red spherical/oval lights slowly moving across the eastern sky from what seemed like a south to north direction. These lights were more or less in a line stretching about a fourth of the way across the sky as I watched them slowly move southward. They were not tightly spaced but had about same space between them: K One........Two.......Three/ Four (these two were one above the other with roughly the same ....... spacing, and seemed to be trying to get closer to each other) then........Five. They must have not been that far away from me because they were quite bright and bigger than stars. I don't know where they came from I just saw them there in that line slowly moving north. At a certain point (which oddly corresponds to where the visibility from my vantage point is unobstructed when looking at that part of the sky), the light of first object suddenly went dark, and after that when each of those objects reached that part of the sky they too sent dark. It seems that they may have continued on but moving east now ( but I could not be certain).This sighting occurred in Tampa, but in the Temple Terrace/Thontosassa area. These objects moved slowly, and I estimate I watched this for at least three minutes. I wondered if anyone else saw them? As watched it felt almost like they were putting on a show just for me as it took so long. I looked on-line, and it may be possible they were some sort of sky lanterns ( Chinese lanterns) as they are that color and move slowly. I can't be certain. I did not hear of any being launched. But it is a possibility. I always look up at the night sky and have never seen anything like what I saw ever before. However, there was a night in the summer of 2009 in which I saw on roughly that same area of the sky where the lights went off in last nights sighting; a strangely churning white cloud ( at night). I remember because I have NEVER seen a cloud churn and billow so fast. On that night I got a chill because I was driving home listening to a man tell a story about Moses and the cloud appearing in the mountain, when, as I pulled into my driveway, I saw this strangely churning cloud directly in my line of vision. It was late at night also and the synchronicity of what I saw and heard made me run for cover inside my house. So for me, I guess, that area of sky is indeed mysterious. I softened wondered if behind that churning cloud was a mother ship. Odd that the lights should disappear when they got to that part of the sky...

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #120555). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.