Rectangle over Tucson, AZ
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
I was driving North toward the Catalina Mountains when I turned my gaze to the left and was startled by an intense set of lights on a large, pitch-black object which appeared to be within 5-6 blocks West of my intersection. I was startled by how large the object appeared to be compared to usual aircraft, how close it appeared to me, the intensity and unique semi-linear organization of the lights, and by the fact that the craft appeared to be stationary in the sky. It was lower than a helicopter would typically be, but was larger and flatter than a helicopter. I immediately pulled over with the intent of getting a picture. Once I was stopped and facing the object straight on, I noticed the rectangular shape and what appeared to be a projection on the far dorsal surface, with some of the lights set further back on the craft than others (in contrast to the semi-linear arrangement of my initial perspective). Within about 3 seconds of me getting a good look at it from this view, it began a Southeast descent at only about 10mph faster than what I'd expect from a typical aircraft. At this point I considered that perhaps it was just a helicopter, but I did not hear any sound as it descended and the shape of the object was more bizarre from the sideview, appearing wide across and essentially flat. One light flashed a couple of times at a quick/strobe-like rate while the others were larger, had a slightly more yellowish hue, and remained constant. I turned my car back around the way I'd initially come, to try and follow it, but by the time I had stopped at a stop sign and turned South, it had gone. This seemed unusual to me because my view of the horizon was fairly good, and at the speed I had seen it travelling (55 miles at most) I fully expected to still see it after the ~5 seconds it took to get my car reoriented, but I saw no trace whatsoever. No one in surrounding cars seemed to see it, but I did feel uncomfortable with how low and near me it seemed, and I got the impression that it "responded" to me pulling over to face it because it had been hovering in the same spot while I was watching it while still driving, but started descending/moving away a very short time after I pulled over. The only other thing I can think to note is that there had been a power outage 4-5 hours prior in that area, including outage for the traffic lights of the intersection I was at when I saw the object.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #144632). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2019-01-19 → 2019-02-05
From the same sky
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see above
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