I saw my first UAP. I’m open to the idea that is a non-exotic explanation for what I saw, but because I believe every data point matters, and because I’m tired of reading stories with few/vague details, I have decided to share my story in as much detail as I can. I am not here to try to say it was NHI or reverse engineered tech, etc. I simply cannot explain what I saw, and so I will share it in hopes that somehow it furthers the discussion one way or another (I will also be cross-posting in a couple other threads).
Background: I am a professional pilot, and have been flying since I was 10 years old. I fly Boeing 767’s for a living. I have been around airports, military bases, airshows, and an uncountable number of different types of aircraft throughout my life. I have seen aircraft fly at various different altitudes in many different weather and time of day conditions. I have observed them from the ground and from the air while flying in numerous different settings. I am very intimately familiar with my local area and the approach patterns and altitudes of local approach sequencing and local airports. I say all this to say- I know a lot about aircraft and have seen and flown them in almost any setting from almost any vantage point you can imagine. So, when I say that I looked up and I didn’t understand what I was looking at, I mean precisely that. That doesn’t mean it was NHI or exotic tech. It just means that my aviation-trained brain could not reconcile what I was looking at with any previous encounter with aircraft that I have ever had in my life. With that being said, here is what I witnessed:
On Thursday, September 26th at 11:30am CST I met with a friend to play tennis. In between points at approximately 12:12pm, I looked up and noticed that there were very long spider web threads (probably 8-10 feet) hanging off the top of the court lights, shimmering in the sun, and blowing in the wind. Apparently, there are spiders in my local area that spin webs that allow them to “balloon” on the wind and float around. These webs get caught on trees, lights, etc. I’ve even been finding them in my car. I am not an entomologist, but I think that’s what those silky threads were from.
As I was looking up admiring the threads, I noticed a brilliant white, spherical object moving in the sky at a pace that didn’t seem normal to me; it seemed very fast. It was moving from my east/northeast towards the northwest. When I noticed it, the object was maybe 10 degrees to the right of me, and it was maybe 10 degrees in front of me. So essentially, I wasn’t looking directly up above my head, but I was looking up, to my right and forward a bit. It moved through probably 80-90 degrees of viewing angle for a period of about 12 seconds prior to it disappearing behind some haze maybe 10-20 degrees above the northwest horizon.
The sun was to my south and I would guess maybe 35-40 degrees of elevation from the horizon. The sky was mostly clear with periodic clouds/haze. The wind was maybe 8-10 knots out of the east at ground level, and a max of maybe 18 knots out of the east a couple thousand feet AGL. This object was moving in more or less the same direction as the wind. It flew in a straight line and did not appear to maneuver.
When I first saw the object, I felt confused at what I was looking at. I wondered if it was a shooting star, but quickly decided it didn’t really look like that. I normally see dozens of aircraft flying over the local area every day, and none of them looked like that. I exclaimed out loud to my tennis partner “what the heck is that?” I think that he thought I was talking about the spider webs still because he kept looking up at them. I watched as the object continued to “fly”. I walked a couple steps closer toward the net and stared at it, again remarking at its unusual characteristics to my partner. After probably the third or fourth “Do you see that thing? What the heck is that?”, he finally got his eyes on it as well and was equally as dumfounded. A few seconds later, the object disappeared behind some apparent atmospheric haze toward the northwest horizon.
It is difficult for me to say with any certainty what altitude the object was at. My initial reaction was that it was high (30,000-50,000 feet). As I continued to observe it, I wondered if it was low (3,000-5,000 feet). As I reflect on the experience, I really have no clue. It was such an odd sight that I really just do not know what altitude it could have been at. However, it did appear to be well above the trees/buildings in the surrounding area.
The object was round, but the edges were difficult to discern (much different than if you were looking at a jet flying by, which has very distinct body lines). It was bright- not as bright as a star, but bright as if the white paint was brilliantly reflecting the sun, or even like the light was being created by itself. Interestingly, when you look up and see a white airplane in the sky, the intensity of the light reflecting off of it depends on its relative distance from you. The further away it is, the “duller” it will be due to the atmosphere absorbing some of the light between the plane and you. This object was different. The brightness of the object was uniform in the entirety of the viewing experience. It did not diminish as it got further away, and it did not seem that there was any degradation to its brightness due to the altitude it was flying at.
There was no sound coming from the object. Many times, when aircraft fly over, you hear some sort of sound from the engines. Sometimes, due to atmospheric conditions, it is possible to see an aircraft with your eyes (even one that is close) and not hear it. That very well could be the case here. Whatever the case, I heard absolutely no sound coming from the object.
The object potentially exhibited several of the “5 observables”. 1) Anti-gravity: it had no flight surfaces or any external lift-producing surfaces. 2) Low Observability- It was diffuse, and the edges were difficult to discern. 3) Hypersonic Velocity: It had what seemed to be a very high velocity (more on this in a second) with no sonic boom or other sound signatures. Depending on the altitude, it could have been hypersonic.
Using the formula (altitude(sin90/sin45))/time, we can estimate the speed of the object at different altitudes (thank you Redditors for help with the math!). Due to a few variables, these speeds are approximate, not exact. At 5,000 feet, it would have been going 401mph (348 kts), which is significantly faster than the normal allowable speed (250 kts) at that altitude. That fact leads me to believe that it was not flying below 10,000 feet, because ATC most likely would have not allowed them to fly that fast. At 10,000 feet it would be going 803 mph (697 kts). At 15,000 feet, 1205 mph (1047 kts). At this point it’s well into the supersonic range. At 20,000 feet, 1,607 mph (1396 kts). We can keep going up to any altitude and find the speed using the formula above. Interestingly, the higher you go, the faster it has to be going to cover that same angular distance. At 50,000 feet it would be going 4018mph (3491 knots). That’s SR-71 speeds with no sound, sonic boom, or any other indication of the speed.
Unfortunately, I do not have pictures or video. My phone was laying on the ground next to my tennis bag, which was all the way on the other side of the court. If the entire experience lasted 12 seconds, the first 5 were me noticing it and then my brain running through the gamut of all of my aviation experience trying to figure out what I was looking at compared to what I have seen previously in my life. After that failed, the next 5 seconds were spent trying to get my hitting partner to look at it while asking myself “am I really seeing a UAP right now?”. The final two seconds were spent remarking to each other what an unusual sight it was, and thinking to myself that “holy crap, this really is a UAP”. Even if I had wanted to, there was no time to run all the way across the court to get my phone and take a photo. And even if I did have my phone with me, I’m not sure I would have thought to immediately take it out and start taking photos, because I hadn’t even resolved in my mind that what I was looking at was truly unknown until over half way through the encounter. By the time I had made up my mind that I was potentially seeing a UAP, there wouldn’t have been enough time to snap a photo or video.
One thing I wish I had done was gone to ADSB Exchange to see if it was picking up anything. Even after the object was no longer visual, there’s a chance I could have found it on ADS-B if, in fact, it was just a normal aircraft that I was misidentifying. If that was the case, I could have quickly ruled out any other explanation. Unfortunately, that idea didn’t come to mind in the moment.
Final thoughts: Based upon my own experience in aviation, I do not think this was an airplane. I think there are however a couple non-exotic possibilities of what it could be. There's a possibility that it was just a super-illuminated ball of spider web that was blowing in the wind, or it could have been a white balloon that was being illuminated by the sun. The fact that it was moving in the same direction as the prevailing wind gives credence to this theory. However, I believe in order to have seen a ball of web or balloon that distinctly, it would have had to be at a much lower altitude than this appeared to be. And the speed doesn’t make sense when taking into account the winds aloft.
It could have been a shooting star or flying space debris, but the speed seems to be too slow for that, and the luminosity was not as bright as I have experienced it to be for something like that. It could have been a satellite, but I’ve never seen one in the middle of the day like that, so I don’t know how plausible that is. It very well could have been an aircraft and I just didn’t see its wings due to some sort of weird shadow from the sun. This theory is difficult for me to accept because there were many aircraft flying around before and after the object passed, and each of them were clearly and distinctly distinguishable.
Ultimately, I don’t know what I saw. The best I can describe it is that it was a white glowing sphere traveling very fast at an unknown altitude. As I said in the beginning, I’m open to the idea that it could be a very normal explanation for what it was. However, in all my years of looking up, I have never seen anything like this before. To me it will always remain a mystery.
by Necessary-Rub-2748