Formation over Owatonna, MN
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Was driving Eastward, when 3 distinct lights were noticed. A very bright white light was what caught my attention first. That's when I realized there were 2 more, red and green lights. At first these lights struck me right away as if to be a plane crashing because of the speed of which the object(s) were moving from top of my windshield to ground level. I initially searched to see if there were any plane crashes in the area at all. The main part that struck me as a plane was the brightest light, the white, and then the green and red lights both on a side of the white one. There was part tree cover and suburb cover that blocked my view of the potential crash site. I also did not hear any "boom" of an explosion of any plane type of craft. From what I could estimate from the trees and houses in the way, it seemed to be at least a few miles out, but not further than about 10. I am also a night sky hobbyist and definitely know the difference between a meteor shooting across the sky and whatever this may have been. I did drive to where I had estimated a "crash site" of the object. Drove along many back roads within a few miles of my estimated "crash site" to find nothing but eerily empty gravel roads surrounding Eastern Owatonna North of Highway 14.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #122088). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2015-09-19 → 2015-10-06
From the same sky
Related entries
December 10, 2020 · 6:30 PM · UNKNOWN
Owatonna, MN
Object with multiple white lights flying east bound making a sharp southern turn then turning back west and finally turns south as it gained altitude and slowly lights faded beyond sight. This happened in roughly 1 minutes time. All turns were 90% with no stopping involved. Craft appeared to be higher altitude then lower flying aircraft due to a slight haze not seen coming from aircraft lights as it did with stars and Jupiter/Saturn at the same time.
December 4, 2019 · 6:15 PM · CIRCLE
Owatonna, MN
My Fiance, her father and I were on our way home from Owatonna, MN around 6:15pm on December 4th 2019 when we noticed 3 bright orange lights in the sky heading SE along highway 14. At first I thought maybe they were lanterns someone had let go, but then we noticed them split into 3 more lights and then go into 2 triangle formations and changed direction and traveled west. We also noticed how large they were to us for being up in the sky. We pulled over to watch them for a few minutes until they just like faded away. We seen a helicopter or something after that heading from the South but the lights were gone by the time it arrived near us. Im not exactly sure what they were but they surely caught our attention.
September 9, 2018 · 10:00 PM · LIGHT
Owatonna, MN
Almost in direct center of night sky west and south of “Big Dipper” bright light which seems to resemble a star but it moves faster in small distances (all directions) for 1-2 second intervals, than satellites passing by object. It is not “a wobble effect.” Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD
November 11, 2016 · 10:54 PM · FIREBALL
Owatonna, MN
A meteor entered the atmosphere and exploded. Very bright flash, with a small remaining fire ball falling.
August 4, 2015 · 11:59 PM · CONE
Owatonna, MN
I have seen UFO's before; such as a dim moving "star" that would glow bright red and cause other stars to all but disappear. I, however, never felt the need to report it, since I didn't have much of a description besides what I wrote in the sentence above and it didn't really look all that exciting either. That all changed the night before last night. Me and a friend of mine were walking to the local gas station to buy some cigarettes, as I was looking towards my friend my eyes were drawn towards the night sky by the most surreal/gorgeous thing I have ever seen. It had white (hot?) ball that was leading the descent and that ball was surrounded in a green light -Im not sure what an aura is but thats how I always pictured one-that extended backwards into the bright green (and very long…at least 10X the diameter of the white ball/rock) tail. I actually got a little lightheaded from seeing something so cartoonish shoved into my reality. It looked like a moving painting with how bright and vivid it was against the night sky. The smoke trail was still visible cutting infront of the moon. Here are some reasons why it seemed strange to me: - It was so jaw droppingly surreal and incredibly larger than the meteors/comets that I would see on youtube - There was not a single sound, although it looked so big that I expected it had hit somewhere close by, but I can't even find other sightings let alone an impact. There was no flaring up of what I assume were the green flames, instead it maintained a uniform color/burn during the couple of seconds it was in my view. I don't know if answers are given here, but if there's anyway someone know what that was or has seen something like that please let me know. ((ADDENDUM FROM WITNESS)) Hello, Thank you for replying so promptly. It could have been anything since this is the first thing of its kind that Ive ever seen. But I will say that that I spent a significant amount of time between then and now trying to find a picture or video similar to what I saw. I found green fireballs and green meteors but the ones i saw all seemed to have yellow or orange flames at the tip of the tail or even along the entire tail. This one's tail was glowing green and is the part that caught my eye the most. I'm really interested to know if its normal that meteors can appear to be so close and vivid yet make no sound? Are there any resources that you would know of besides this website to find out who else has seen this in the area so I could try to find a photo, I already miss the view. Thank you, ((name deleted)) ((END ADDENDUM))
November 27, 2013 · 6:00 PM · CHANGING
Owatonna, MN
Changes shape. ((NUFORC Note: We suspect a sighting of Venus. PD))