Formation over McKinleyville, CA

The report, as filed

On the night of April 21, 2017 at 9:03 PM Pacific Time, I walked outside to move my car from the driveway to the street in Humboldt County, California. As I walked outside and looked to the sky, Westward, above the Pacific Ocean, there were four spherical or circular red lights that were very bright red in the center and in a formation similar to the big dipper star constellation. The objects were moving in formation upward and to the right (if on land looking at the Pacific Ocean the objects were moving North). I immediately thought these were four ufos and I should grab my Samsung Galaxy S6 Smart Phone and take a video. At 9:04 PM Pacific Time, when raising the phone to take video, I took one accidental photograph, containing three of the four mentioned objects. The bottom three were captured. The missing ufo was about 150 degrees from furthest red dot on left in photograph. Although the three lights do not appear completely red in the photo, the four lights in the sky were clearly all red in person. Upon capturing that photograph and attempting to take one video, the objects seemed to be aware I was capturing them and decided to disperse and slightly break formation and each go upwards quickly. They continued to fly upwards at about a 90 degree angle until I could no longer see the faint red lights. They kept going and going until they faded away above the Pacific Ocean. This all happened within 1-2 minutes at most. Between 9:03-9:05 PM. The photograph was taken at 9:04 PM Pacific Time.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #133760). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.