The following is summarized from reports posted by the National UFO Reporting Center.
The night of May 5, the Center received three telephone reports of an apparently very large object seen in rapid sequence over Austin and Dallas, Texas.
The first call came from a man in Round Rock, which is approximately 30 to 40 miles norht of Austin. The man said his sighting occurred at about 10:45 pm local time. He walked out of his garage and noticed a peculiar cluster of lights overhead. He saw at least five lights of varying size, brightness, and color, he said. The lights were oriented in a straight line, with the "nose" and "tail" lights brighter than those in between. He reported that the formation was visible to him for approximately 5-10 seconds, during which time the lights moved directly overhead in a steady procession to the northeast.
The second phone call came in shortly thereafter from Flower Mounds, a suburb of Dallas. The caller said she an another young woman were out walking when one of them noticed a strange cluster of lights overhead. The time was approximately 10:50 pm. What they witnessed, they said, caused them to hug one another out of shock and alarm.
The caller described a very large cluster of at least 5-7 individual lights, oriented in a slightly curving line, "like a gigantic pencil, tipped up at an angle." She reported that the size of the cluster seemed "huge" to them, and it moved across the sky at a steady procession.
Suddenly, the lights got very much brighter, then dimmed, and then simply disappeared from view. The sighting lasted 1 to 2 minutes.
Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, noted that if these two calls were reporting the same object, then the object would appear to have traveled a distance of approximately 200 miles in about 5 minutes, requiring a speed of 2,400 miles per hour. However, while in view, the array of lights appeared to be moving at a slow pace. No sound of any kind was heard.
The third call came from Lancaster, a suburb of Texas (time unclear, shortly after 11 pm). The caller said he is a member of an astronomical group in Dallas and is well acquainted with aerial and celestial phenomena. He characterized his sighting as "the most bizarre sight" he had ever seen in his life.
He described eight lights in the sky, oriented in an almost straight line. He said it appeared to be the shape "of a big wing," which he estimated to be "huge." He said he thought the formation was as large as "ten airplanes lined up (nose to tail), bigger than two football fields."
From the observer's vantage point, the object was in the northern sky, and it appeared to fly off to the north before he lost sight of it.
Approximately one hour later and 850 miles away, Phoenix-area researcher Bill Hamilton and his wife Pamela went outside to watch the Eta-Aquarid meteor shower. In a memo posted to the internet the following morning, Bill wrote:
"At 10:30 [local time, two hours behind Texas time] I had my chair turned to the NW to look for meteors when I spotted something eerie at about 75 degrees elevation, 270 degrees azimuth west of Mars: a row of 6 softly glowing objects traveling at about jet speed on a vector from south to north without sound. This row of objects (or lights on one object) was about 3X the length of an airliner at intermediate altitudes (5,000 - 10,000 feet) traveling silently without strobes or running lights. That makes the row about 350 to 400 feet in length. This row pivoted like a compass needle and proceeded on a NW trajectory before leaving our sight. The duration of the sighting was about 5 to 7 seconds. Pamela saw the same sight as I [and] pointed and yelled."
What was in the sky the night of May 5? Any reader with further information is encouraged to contact CNI News as well as the National UFO Reporting Center.
Original file name: CNI - NUFORC.Texas May 5
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