Orange Orbs

On Sunday December 27th, 2009 at approximately 8:15 p.m. I received a phone call from my oldest daughter while I was at home watching television with my youngest daughter. She and her mother had been out shopping for a few items when thy noticed some very strange lights in the sky. She excitedly asked me to walk outside and look for the lights that they were seeing ad tell them what it was. As a professional pilot now and aviation enthusiast since birth I have been studying the sky's for my entire life, literally. I walked outside and stood on my front porch with my youngest daughter and immediately saw the lights that they were talking about. My front porch faces due north and the lights, which were orange in color and North West of my position, were slowly rising from the horizon at about fifteen degrees above the horizon and then fading out of sight around thirty degrees above the horizon. These are estimates based on what I would normally see on an attitude indicator relating to various degrees of pitch while climbing. There were three orbs in the first group that I saw, in no particular pattern, all tracking straight up from my perspective. Once these lights faded out of sight about fifteen minutes passed until we saw the second group of four which behaved in the same manner as the first set. I then called my parents who live a few miles north west and asked them to look for the lights which they did with no success. Another twenty minutes or so passed and the third group appeared this one with about ten orbs again in no particular pattern all floating upwards at a vary slow rate. The third orb in this group went as high as about thirty-five degrees above the horizon before fading away.

I have been flying for over fifteen years and have never experienced lights of this nature. I am sure that they were not aircraft or any type of signaling flare due the slow rate of their ascent. The only explanation that I had was something similar to a Chinese Lantern which produces lift by a small candle heating the air inside the lantern causing it to expand and rise like a hot air balloon. Once it reaches an altitude where the air is too thin to support combustion the flame simply extinguishes itself. This seemed like a logical explanation and since there were no other reports of strange lights in the sky, I accepted it as fact.

Then on Wednesday January 13th, 2010 while flying eastbound to Augusta, GA from Nashville, TN at 25,000 feet I witnessed more orange orbs that I can not explain away as Chinese Lanterns. These orange lights were also seen just above the horizon only they acted in a completely different manner. These simply faded into sight and back out of sight for period of about ten to fifteen seconds with no relative motion in the windshield. The second set of three lights seemed to track across the sky at a slow rate and close interval. These lights were vary far way and could have been white lights tinted orange by the atmosphere. The first set of lights could have been an aircraft circling although without relative motion it is not likely. I have no explanation for the second set of lights.