interesting bright light spotted

This is the first time I have ever posted at ATS. I have been reading a lot from this forum, but never thought I should post due to the fact that I have never experienced the UFO phenomenon and didn’t want to ever belittle someone’s post here. I have however been researching UFOs over the net for at least 5 years now.

A little about myself: I am 20 years old. I have just recently moved to Red Deer (central Alberta Canada) last summer, which is between Calgary and Edmonton. I have never seen a UFO, although I have studied them a lot in all forms via internet.

I do not know if what I saw was a UFO or not. It could have been ball lightning. But tonight at around 11:00PM I was playing with my new dig cam (Canon PowerShot A75), learning how to lower its exposure levels so I could take some pictures of the northern lights. When I got upstairs to go outside and walked toward my sliding glass door, I saw an extremely bright red light in the distance above my shed, but it did seem to be far away from my shed. Where I had spotted it, there are no street lights, not to mention it was much too far up in the air to be a terrestrial light. Whatever it was, it was high in the air. When I saw it, my heat beat raised by quite a bit. I hurried outside as fast as I could, but what seemed to be less then a millisecond after I raised my cam to it, it either disappeared or lowered behind my shed - so i have no proof. (from what I can visualize in my mind of this sighting, it lowered – but it was so fast I could be mistaken)

Characteristics of weather, and what I saw: A deep bright red light. Light was clearly far away, but very large in size. It seemed perfectly round in shape. It glared as if I was looking into a light bulb or even the sun.( but could look directly at it) There was no thunderstorm. There was a very slow, light snowfall. Could clearly see the northern lights. There was no streak of lightning in origin connecting to it. Lasted approximately 7-14 seconds after I saw it. At first it seemed to stay in one spot, but then it seemed to lower, until it was behind my shed.(in which I ran around to try to spot it again but lost it) Seemed to start to move (or disappear) as soon as I raised my camera. (camera also would of taken about a second to shoot because of lowerd exposure – but IMO the bright light would have been bright enough for my camera to take a picture of it with normal “auto” exposure)

I do not claim to see a UFO. Although it would be exciting to know that I did. I am simply asking anyone who cares opinion on the matter, whether it ball lightning or a UFO..

I do have some pictures of the northern lights that I took within seconds/mins after I spotted it, but have decided not to post them unless they are requested.

I don’t know much about the northern lights, but from what I briefly looked around on the net about them, I saw no mention of ball lighting, or a big red bright orb.

Thank you for your input. I will value everyone’s opinion.

Arachnid

Hi, interesting sighting. I think it could have been a flare of some jet maybe (i don't now if it can be red, specialists will confirm). Or a genuine UFO... Difficult to say. Did you notice some smoke around the light ? How was the speed of the light when it lowered ?

I didn’t notice any smoke around the light. It seemed to move pretty slow, in what seemed to be downwards, perhaps a little bit towards the left at the same time. I was in such awe and fumbling to ready my camera I may have missed a few characteristics of it. It was a pretty cloudy night too. I have no idea what it could of been. Other then a "UFO", all I could imagine that it would be is a very large case of ball lighting. But from all the pictures of ball lighting I have seen, they have sort of a line streaking towards it. This light didn’t have anything like that.

Also - here in Canada there isn’t as much Military jets flying around as the USA. It was also pretty bad flying conditions last night. Cloudy, light snow, and the Northern lights.

But IMO the light was too bright for a flare, and too large. It was huge, and yet pretty far away in the distance from what I could tell. It was much bigger then the “Phoenix lights” pictures that I saw – maybe because it was closer? I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be comparing it to the “Phoenix lights”. But I haven’t found too much info about Orb UFOs on the net. At least not in picture form.

[edit on 19-2-2005 by Arachnid69]

did it look anything like this....

?????????

It could have been about that size in diameter, but it was during the night, was a very deep bright red, and had long rays coming off of it.