Cigar over Bonners Ferry, ID

The report, as filed

May 15, 2021 at approximately 2235: Standing on my porch looking north, northwest (in direction of Boundary County, Idaho airport) when I saw something not a star but thought maybe a comet but even that was not correct. It appeared almost vertical (not quite vertical – slanted) above the horizon but then while I was looking for a camera it was almost directly in front of me moving slowly from west to east. I tried to take pictures (should have went for my binoculars) but the flash went off and I couldn’t get the camera to focus. At 2238 (confirmed on my phone), I phone-called a colleague who lives close by (a retired fighter pilot) to look and confirm that it was not the “string-of-pearls” Starlink we’d both seen before. He saw it as well and agreed it was not the Starlink we’d previously seen and also did not know what it was. To me, from my vantage point, it was a series of white lights – steady, not flashing– as if a bus or subway car with windows and lights shining through. I could not tell if it was a solid object, but from the lights it appeared to be the classic “cigar” shaped UFO, though it could have had more depth. But again, from my vantage point, I could not determine if and how much depth it may have had. I thought it was low in the sky, maybe 5K feet high at most, and I lost it in the trees as it traveled west towards the Montana border. It did not make a sound

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #163467). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.