An Unknowncountry.com reader took this video over Phoenix on the night of January 12. This is not a formation of candle lanterns unless they are held together by a frame that is, in turn, being kept aloft by an unseen balloon. This is possible, but they would almost certainly twirl slowly if they were dangling from a balloon, and there is no evidence of that. This may be a constructed object hoax, but it may also be an unknown.
The individual who took the video has determined that the wind direction that night was westerly, but the object was moving east. Here is his full report:
I pulled in to a strip mall for work and saw this in the sky from my car. It is a triangle of 3 lights traveling West to East, mostly white looking light with a slight yellow tint. I saw it when it was directly in front of me facing Elliot Road from the strip mall at 1989 West Elliot Road. Elliot is the road on the video. It is North of me. The lit up buildings at the end, in the direction of travel, are East of me. There are two clips put together in this video because I still had my door closed and my seatbelt on when I began the first shot. I stopped the camera to get out. There were no navigation lights visible like urban aircraft would have, even as the angle changed when they flew past. It was just these 3 single lights. There was no noise that I heard except ground traffic. It held the same triangle formation the whole time which is what really caught my eye. A cursory look at wind information from that time, says that the wind should have been blowing West, the opposite direction.
There is some small change in the formation of the triangle, especially when viewed at higher speed but it seems to reform itself to maintain the shape. I don’t know if this is a change in formation, perspective, or both. Behind it was nothing but black background so there was no way to know how high or low it was or if I could see through the middle of the triangle shape. It was below what appeared to be a low lying cloud layer with lots of moving mist in the air above me. Stars were visible in the Southern sky and the horizon to the West but not where the lights were. It was also a very cold night, around 32 degrees or so.
The lights had a gentle flickering appearance like the flame in lanterns. On the video this appears more like the twinkling of stars but at the very beginning of the sighting I saw a detail in the light that actually appeared a little like a candle flame. My immediate thought when it was closest to me was that I was seeing candles in Chinese lanterns or kerosine lanterns drifting silently on unseen balloons, maybe even flares drifting on parachutes. But there was no glowing lampshade like the Chinese lanterns have, no evidence of balloons and also no lit up smoke trail like flairs have around them. The formation was also so controlled looking that it was hard to accept it as free drifting items, even though it was silent, like watching balloons or lanterns float by. That made me think of a military aircraft formation, but the lights were very peculiar for aircraft and they would be moving awfully fast if they were way up high. It was also much too big a shape to be a kite or a hang glider with LED’s on it. It felt like it would be football field sized if it was only 100-500 feet above me, let alone higher. This is what made me realize it was unusual and I should get it on video for investigation.
The video looses the lights at the end but to my eyes it never vanished or made any sudden moves. It just slowly, silently, drifted past until the dots of light were too small for the phone viewfinder to resolve anymore. I saw it with my eyes for another minute or so before it finally traveled behind the buildings. Total time from seeing it till it was gone, maybe 3 minutes.
My final observation which is harder to make out on the video is that the triangle became distorted slightly as it moved the furthest away, close examination of the original footage shows this more clearly at the end. The triangle began to get squashed looking as if the the front light was moving inward to form a vertical line. At first I thought it was changing formation but it may also have been a perspective illusion as the angle I viewed it from changed . . or both. The illusion would be of a larger triangle shaped object, slowly banking left. There are clearly a bunch of optical illusions possible here which is why I am having such a hard time knowing what to make of it."
Story Source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD_5Er_UAnM Dreamland Video podcast
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