Circle over Bristol, VA

The report, as filed

I was walking our dog and saw 2 orange lights coming over from the north. At first I thought they were helicopters with their spotlights dimmed. They spread out some then the one to my right went straight up. It was a clear night with high cirus clouds and it made it into the clouds in I'd guess 5-8 seconds. No sound from either one. I was hoping a car would come by so someone else would see it. I saw a man walking away from me and I yelled at him to look up. He came over and we watched waiting for the other to also go up into the clouds. It stayed at I'd guess 1500 feet for another minute or so then it also went straight up into the clouds. I had a hard time keeping the other man's attention on the orange lights, I typically carry a pistol and he kept wanting to talk about my gun. I finally told him we can talk about guns anytime, but this was once in a lifetime. The next night when I went to walk our dog he and 2 other young people were at the sa! me spot looking for the UFO's to return, so apparently he was paying more attention to them than I'd thought. I considered Chinese lanterns but the speed they it when they went vertical had to be something like mach 3. No sonic booms though. No structure, just the lights were visible to us. On the video I tried to take with my cell phone there are small white lights dropping down which I'd not noticed as I was trying to video them. They may be some sort of optical illusion though, they're bright white, the first looked like a falling star then the others were smaller. I don't know what they are, I videoed the next night to see if they were reflections or something and they didn't show up on that video but it seems I'd have noticed them had they actually been like shooting stars so I do think it's something unrelated to the orange lights.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #136717). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.