Unknown over Bozeman, MT

The report, as filed

I am just now submitting a report I witnessed about a month ago. This happened at some point during August 20-24. I am an adult female living in Bozeman, Montana. Around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m., I walked outside onto my 3rd story balcony, and it wasn't long before something in the sky captured my attention. Flying from west to north, I believed it was a satellite. Then, I noticed as the object abruptly changed direction going east. Now, this is when I began watching it more closely. It seemed as if it was in the atmosphere, it was flying at a slower speed than an airplane would be, and I could see in the distance the object had red and white lights. Suddenly, I see another object just like the first one, coming from the same direction, west. The first object, still flying east at this time, then turns around and goes toward the second flying object! The two flying objects are now coming towards each other. When they cross paths, the two objects STOP completely in mid flight! They lined up perfectly(one on top of the other) and each emitted a bright, red-orange light that looked like two huge balls of light. Only for about two or three seconds did that last, and they continued flying in the opposite direction. The first one flew southwest, and out of my view (behind my apartment building), and I continued to watch the second object fly east, along the moutian tops in the distance and then began flying directly north, away from my view. This is when the first object ended up flying directly overhead and I could get a look at it. Like I said, it was flying in the atmosphere, so it was as low as a plane or a helicopter might be. But, all I could see were lights, no aircraft. As if it were invisible. On what would be the underside of the craft had red lights in the shape of two rectangles overlapping and fading in and out with the white circular lights on the sides. I watched the two mysterious flying objects until they were totally out of sight. This ran the course of about 15 to 20 minutes. My assessment of the situation is they were maybe on some sort of "scouting" mission, because of the way they flew in opposite directions. Then they "linked up", as to share data, and continued in different ways. Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #136370). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.