Light over Redondo Beach, CA
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
I'd just left my house to pick up a takeout order from a local restaurant. It was just before 9 PM local time. I looked up in the northern sky, which was dark. Normally I see air traffic on final approach to LAX, which is only a few miles north of my home. Traffic moves East to West on final approach for normal wind patterns, and hence traffic moves right to left as one looks North to the airport. Tonight, I observed three bright lights, quite high in the northern sky. They were irregularly spaced, and quite bright, of roughly the same brightness, in roughly a horizontal line (not precisely), and all were orange in color. The color was strange to me, given the normal landing light (white) and navigation light (red and green) colors. Usually, with LAX traffic, one can distinguish individual lights on the planes coming in for final. These were single points as far as I could tell, and no flashing anti-collision lights. The trio must have spanned 10 or 15 degrees from my vantage point. Many times the size of a full moon in terms of angular separation between the leftmost and rightmost lights. The other thing that seemed odd is that they were moving slowly from left to right - in other words Eastward. That is very unusual for traffic at LAX. I kept my eyes on them on and off as I drove Eastward myself on Artesia Blvd (and Slausson) to the restaurant. I pulled into the restaurant parking lot, and just as I was looking for a spot, I noticed that the lights were fading out. No change in flight path. Soon afterwards they disappeared entirely. It was unclear whether there was low cloud cover in the distance that was obscuring the view to the lights - the sky was dark so it was impossible to tell. But the lights never re-appeared. I'm a student pilot and aerospace engineer, so have a background in aircraft spotting. These seemed very peculiar.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #127856). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2016-06-09 → 2016-06-26
From the same sky
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February 5, 2022 · 9:30 PM · UNKNOWN
Redondo Beach, CA
I saw something very unusual. Dare I say a UFO. What I feel is that it was not a plane. I was on my run just around Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, CA. What I saw was what I first mistook as a plane flying by in the lower troposphere, but what was unusual was the VERY BRIGHT ORANGE LIGHT it was emitting. Far brighter than any light a plane would be emitting. I saw it flying closer into vision only to see it decelerate in the night sky, almost to a standstill. After watching it linger and continue to emit bright orange in the sky as it seemed to approach from the eastern sky, I saw it once again accelerate… continuing to emit its bright orange luminosity. It flew away into the horizon into the Oceanside western sky. As it flew west, it seemed to ascend further into the stratosphere, and then mesosphere, until its bright orange light faded as I kept peering from my phone to the UFO . It’s all in the name, UFO, unidentified flying object. So, I can’t tell you what it was, because I honestly don’t know. I doubt it was a plane though. If this were a drone, it had a very powerful orange emitter to still be seen if it ascended towards the mesosphere.
October 15, 2021 · 1:05 AM
Redondo Beach, CA
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January 22, 2021 · 5:00 PM · OVAL
Redondo Beach, CA
Me and my husband were driving back taking the beach route home. We took Pacific coast all the way down to Redondo Beach. It was raining earlier so it was really kind of gloomy and cloudy but for one moment we saw the sunshine through and the water looked beautiful and I decided to take a picture. When I look back at my photos it's when I noticed the object. I could not see it with the naked eye looking out over the ocean. But in my photo I see it because I zoomed in on a certain part of the ocean where the sun was shiny down on and noticed too lights shining down onto the water. The one light was the ray of sunlight coming through the clouds. The other light was coming from the object that I saw.
November 15, 2020 · 2:59 AM · LIGHT
Redondo Beach, CA
I was sleeping when I woke up at about, 2:40am. When my attention was drawn to outside the window, I saw what looked like flashing lights (7-8) in the form of like a Google Image interpretation of a UFO, around Sirius. They were flashing like strobe lights on a aircraft. I saw three stars that were in the same area at the time, it was Sirius, Rigel, and Gemini. At first , I thought that Sirius was about to explode, as expected from the end of a star's life. But, then I saw the lights moving very erratically, like a fish swimming scared in the water, in circles. I thought it was just the one, but I saw the same thing on Rigel, and Gemini. Them moving like that lasted what felt like forever (est. 1min). I grabbed my camera, and coat and ran outside trying to take a photo. But, by the time I was outside and looked in the same area, the multiple lights disappeared, like they left Sirius, Rigel, and Gemini untouched from their spots in the sky.
October 17, 2018 · 9:55 PM · FORMATION
Redondo Beach, CA
I went out to my second story deck to view the Moon and Mars, and saw 5 to seven red blinking lights high up, in a perfect v formation, going south east over Palos Verdes. I could hear a jet noise very deep sounding and got a video of them on my i-phone...the jet noise is also heard on the video as a low roar...this occurred at 9:55 pm last night in clear skys. We spoke via telephone with the witness, and he sounded to us to be quite sober-minded. We suspect that he is a highly qualified, and reliable, witness. Also, he is a member of MUFON, and we have urged him to submit the report to MUFON, as well. PD
October 22, 2017 · 8:10 PM · RECTANGLE
Redondo Beach, CA
My fiancé and I saw at about 8:10PM in Redondo Beach heading Southeast, silently, and at a high rate of speed at low altitude, two circles side by side which were obviously part of the same structure, and were the bottom of a larger rectangular body. It was faintly lit, and it was only visible for approximately 5 seconds. Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD