I observed an unusual phenomena or object

On the 31st of August 2008 at round 22:15 GMT+1, I observed an unusual phenomena or object.We had just arrived home 10 minutes earlier from a dinner with friends in our hometown.My wife was upstairs putting the children to bed and I was downstairs preparing the house for the night.

We live in an area where commercial airplanes are approaching for landing or taking off from our national airport at a regular basis, the airport is about 35km NW from my home.

I know how to distinguish landing lights from an airplane from what I’ve seen that night. Landing lights are typically only useful as visibility aids to the pilots when the aircraft is very low and close to terrain, as during take-off and landing.

These lights are usually of very high intensity because of the considerable distance that may separate an aircraft from terrain or obstacles; the lights of large aircraft can easily be seen from several miles away.

This unidentified flying object/phenomena was approaching me from the west heading to the east, I was in the garden at that point in time. There was no obvious sound of jet engines. At first, I thought that it was an airplane approaching, but the landing lights didn’t resemble anything I had seen before.

It was approaching at a velocity very similar of an airplane in its approach for landing, but the airport’s heading is NW and not East.The object followed its heading on a straight course to my observation point.I couldn’t see the object itself because it was surrounded by a blurred orange glow, but the shape appeared to be cross shaped but not resembling any cross I have ever seen before.It’s difficult to estimate the size of the object and the distance from my observation point, the outline of the object appeared to be the size of a medium size plane (Boeing 737).

My estimation is that I watched the object approaching for about 45 seconds, when I notice that the object changed its heading midflight.The “front” of the glowing object turned south and was hovering for 5 seconds before it took off almost vertically/slightly westwards with an incredible lift and speed.It was a cloudless night and I could follow the object visually reaching a very high altitude as it appeared to be no bigger than a star in the sky.

That maneuver took no longer than 5 seconds, I was still tracking the object as it was suddenly moving eastwards at incredible speed and following a curve of its parabolic flight path to match the curvature of the Earth!

I've lived near airports in Orange County, CA my whole life so I as well am familiar with airplane light patterns.

What you're describing sounds eerily similar to something I saw a few years back:

It was several miles away, easily, and it was a heavy air traffic night. I could see 4 or 5 airplanes in the sky at this precise time. I was with friends at a hill-top park and while they were talking I was looking at the LA skyline, one of my favorites. I noticed all the planes either as white lights (because of their distance) or as blinking blue/red lights, like they do. But then I noticed a different light that didn't change color and it wasn't red or blue or white. I wanna say it was orange but it was probably 6 years ago so I forget exactly. It was flying south along with most of the planes but it was moving at erratic speeds. Faster, slower, faster, slower and at random. I brought the attention to my friends and now there were about 5 of us watching, maybe more, like I said it was a few years ago. Also, wayyyyy to far away to take photo OR video of and I had my digital camera with me I assume, because I always do, and it does both. Anyways, this object changes color mid-flight, disappears completely then re-appears as the same color and begins immediately moving North, then changes color again and changes color once more. Then disappears again, reappearing as the same color but changes direction vertically and increases speed, then slows down and starts moving south again, and changes color again. Then it disappears again, re-appears in the same line but a few inches down(vertically) and in motion. Then it changes back to the original color, and disappears completely.

Now obviously, the order of motion might be a little wrong and the colors only repeated the one time I mentioned but what caught me was when you mentioned the random change of direction. The way you described the movement is exactly as I remember, any time the object disappared I remember it being less than 10 seconds. I wonder if we saw the same type of object...