Formation over Carpinteria, CA

The report, as filed

At about 8:45 pm, my wife and I heard a boy tell his mom to come outside and look at the lights in the night sky. His insistence made us go outside and take a look. We immediately saw in the southern sky 3 very bright, stationary lights that were in a large triangle formation. The lights were much brighter than any star or planet and were many times larger than the planet Jupiter appears at its brightest. It was hard to tell how far away they were, but they appeared to be thousands of feet high. The lights could have been separate or part of a much larger object because their relative distances did not vary during the observation. There was a ¼ moon in the northwestern sky and because of the proximity to Santa Barbara, most of the stars in the sky were very dim. It was impossible to miss these 3 bright objects. We waited for the lights to move, but they stayed stationary for over a minute, then 1 by 1 each light slowly dimmed and then went out. Almost immediately after the last light went out, a small glowing cloud or smudge, as we called it, appeared away from the original triangle formation and started to move rapidly across the sky—heading out towards the ocean. It dropped quickly toward the ocean and followed a long path which took it many miles away into a western part of the night sky. In less than 10 seconds, it disappeared behind the Santa Barbara channel Islands over 20 miles away. Each of these events occurred without any noise. My wife and I are professional people with no previous sightings to report. Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #122096). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.