Fireball over Cresent Lake - Middle of the Mission Mountain Wilderness - F, MT

The report, as filed

Woke up around 1 am on Saturday morning. My tent has a ceiling that is simply made of mesh, so you can clearly see the night's sky. Looking up while laying in my sleeping bag, I saw a bright orange colored light move across the sky. I can describe it this way: at first it moved as fast and was as bright as a shooting star (and that's what I originally thought it was). But it didn't have a long tail or trail like a shooting star. And then it shifted gears dramatically (while still headed in the same trajectory) and went from being super bright to not so bright (by like the power of ten) and at the same instant of losing its brightness, it slowed to the speed at which satellites orbit through the sky. I watched it until it went behind the tops of trees that were in my view of sight. The direction that it traveled was Northeast toward Southwest.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #142254). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.