Sphere over Armona, CA

The report, as filed

At around 8 o’clock in the evening, the sky was dark and I noticed a bright yellow light in the distance toward the West, just over the horizon. What I first considered to be a bright star, this light happened to catch my eye when it appeared to be moving! I thought to myself, “Okay, it’s a plane, but I’ll watch for the blinking red and green lights just to be sure.” It was heading East from the direction of the Lemoore, CA, Navy Base (NAS), which is close to 15 miles West of me. There is always heavy air traffic in this area due to the Navy Base. As I watched this light come closer, traveling at the altitude of what appeared to be that of a single-person prop plane, it reached my proximity in about 30 seconds from a distance which I calculate to be about 5-6 miles away. As it reaches my proximity, I notice that this bright light begins to slow down SIGNIFICANTLY. It has NO blinking lights at all; not red, not green, NONE. At this point, the bright light covers about a half-mile in distance in the same time (30 seconds) that it took it to travel the 5 or 6 miles toward my location. It never came to a full stop, just a slow cruise. NO noise was admitted by this object as it slowly hovered nearby. After these 30 seconds, the bright light begins to speed up again in the same direction previously being traveled. About 5 seconds after picking back up speed, this bright light began to shrink (not dim) as it appeared to be moving rapidly away and out of orbit until I could no longer see it within 4 seconds of its initial ‘shrinking’. And without any noise being admitted, it was gone. Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #122536). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.