Sphere over Sand Point, ID
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Feb 24 at approximately 9:20 pm, my wife and I were walking to the house from an out building. I noticed a red/orange light on the southwest horizon. I thought it could be Mars (not knowing its position this time of year). It was slightly larger than I remember though. I looked at it again, it was steadily moving in a North East direction. I thought aircraft. When we reached the front of the house, I looked again realizing an aircraft should have a blinking light, I thought perhaps something in orbit. At that point I stood and watched, it traveled around 45 degrees from when I first noticed it and started to fade in the clouds. About the same time it came to an abrupt stop, dropped a smaller red/orange object that left a small trail, then both completely disappeared. I have never seen anything in the night sky do anything similar to what I witnessed, so I watched the news cycle and Internet for more information and found nothing.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #138964). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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For a dated, located U.S. sighting, FAA radar data and ATC communications are the records most likely to exist. Through Aletheca, the house instrument, anyone can commission the request — filed, chased, and published in the open, refusals included. The draft goes over already written: the records sought, and the date window they would live in.
Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2018-02-21 → 2018-03-10
From the same sky