Fireball over Perris, CA

The report, as filed

It started 2 nights ago, on 08/20/16, my brother was driving home at about 10:15 PM when he saw the object flying in the air. It was a single glowing red-orange light floating about 150 feet in the air, irregularly pulsating. He immediately could tell it wasn’t a plane or helicopter, as he came closer to the neighborhood he said that the light grew in intensity and brightness before flashing and exploding in what he described as looking like “sparks and drops of liquid metal”. I was at home at the time, I was organizing some papers when I heard a loud explosion, I couldn’t tell if it was a gunshot or fireworks but didn’t think too much of it. When my brother arrived home he told me to come outside and check out the strange light. It definitely wasn’t a plane or helicopter, my first thought was a quadcopter drone. But those are often loud and usually have red and green lights, if any. This was a single orange light that was floating silently from southwest to northeast. I was only able to see it for about 5 minutes before it just suddenly vanished. Frustratingly, it disappeared before I could get any pictures. It happened a second time tonight (08/22/16). It was about 2:40 AM, I was staying up late doing some reading and I heard an extremely loud and percussive boom from outside, it sounded like a grenade went off across the street. It was echoing off of nearby hills it was so loud. I ran outside to see what was happening, dogs were barking all around the neighborhood because of the sound. I thought about the light from 2 nights ago and started looking up to see if it was there, sure enough, the same glowing orange light was silently floating above my neighborhood, this time it was much higher in altitude, maybe 500-1000 feet. Again, it was floating from southwest to northeast, irregularly pulsing in a red-orange hue. A bit redder than a campfire usually is. This time though, it kept moving until it suddenly stopped moving and was stationary in the sky. I was able to get an old telescope out to get a better look, but I couldn’t see any definite features. Even in the telescope it ! was just an orange light. To the naked eye it looked completely stationary, but in the telescope you see it slowing moving around, hovering in place. It slowly faded away until it disappeared about 20 minutes after I started watching it. This time I was able to capture a few pictures of it on my cellphone, which doesn’t show much other than a dot in the sky, but it does show up. Very weird experiences. I’m going to try and be watchful and study it more, if it happens again.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #129429). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.