Light over Gresham, OR

The report, as filed

I have only seen one other thing in my life that would qualify as a UFO and that was over Death Valley years ago. In the daytime and a very physical looking object it was. The below described phenomena was quite different. I am a professional photographer (sorry did not have a camera on me - I was outside smoking my first cigarette of the new day) and was raised as an Air Force brat and have always watched movements in the sky just out of curiosity. I guess it comes from always wanting to know what kind of plane was flying over head. Hey, I was a cold war baby. OK so now to what I saw this morning. Looking up into still very dark morning sky, many stars still quite bright and visible, and just at the head of a vaporous string of light clouds moving to east, I noticed two perfect illuminated semi circles creating a broken full circle of light moving together as if facing each other. They were traveling South West directly overhead, over Gresham, at a very consistent rate of speed. That broken but perfectly shaped semi-circle expanded slowly until it reached a consistent point, that if it was, let’s say at 70,000 ft, would be three or four hundred yards across. Off to side there was a flash of bright but contained light. Almost as if a large star just appeared and then disappeared. The broken semi circle of illuminated light kept moving in it’s original direction. The bright flash of light happened again but this time in front of the moving broken semi circle. The light again seemed to disappear. But then reappeared almost immediately at the head of the the forward part of the semi circle. At this point in the dark morning sky there were no illuminated vaporous clouds that were visible in the slightly to the north sky when I first noticed this phenomena. The trailing part of the semi circle band of vaporous light just disappeared and the forward semi circle now reshaped itself into a strange funnel shape as if illuminating directly out of the bright star like light, but off to it’s side - in a different orientation then it’s preceding travel shape. Both the bright star-like light and the funnel vaporous light traveled together in the same South West direction and then both instantly disappeared for no apparent reason. I would like to back up and rephrase that when the leading semi circle changed it’s shape and orientation, it’s shape defied what one would think of as either a light illuminating out into the atmosphere or a plane’s light or illuminated rocket exhaust. Imagine a star moving that had a headlight shining off to side at an angle but the light pattern was semi thick for several hundred feet as it moved away from bright light and then mushroomed out in a strange pattern and at the end point of it’s beam and made a perfect concave semi-circle. Almost as if it was a strange, physics defying light that was illuminating an invisible perfect circle, while moving. Again, the concave pattern at the end of this vaporous light range stopping as if it was illuminating an invisible large circle off to the back and side of this bright star-like light. I have never seen anything like it in all my years.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #125742). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.