Description

TL;DR: Spotted a stationary object about 200 feet away, visible only in infrared. It lit up super bright, moved south, and disappeared. I miss it.

Around 5 PM on December 17th in Middletown, NJ, it was dusk and clear. I was in my backyard facing east, scanning the skies with my infrared monocular set to "white hot." Jupiter was blocked by the house, but I could see Capella.

I decided to look toward Capella, knowing stars wouldn’t show up in infrared. Instead, I saw a clear, hot white circle through the scope. Weird. Looking away from the scope, I saw a bright off-white light—10x brighter than Jupiter or Venus. It shone brilliantly but wasn’t blinding. My first thought was, "WTF."

Then it started accelerating south, moving faster and faster but staying low and bright. It seemed 200–300 feet away. I hit record as it passed over the middle of the length of my house and disappeared beyond the trees. It wasn’t higher than 300-400 feet.

I was stunned and tried to rationalize it—maybe a bird? But birds don’t glow or stay perfectly round in infrared. It didn’t match drones, planes, meteors. And in IR you can't see planets/stars, only the moon.

Now a few anecdotal observations/vibes:

I went out "drone hunting" the prior weekend. I thought I saw amazing things in it -- turned out to be birds. But I got a lot of my family concerned about my well being. I had some constructive conversations with my wife on Tuesday. Mainly how this is a spiritual endeavor for me. I don't know if this highly emotional period had anything to do with my sighting. But something tells me it did. And the communication was, "Hey, yeah we're here. Take it easy."

I had to piece together the experience. I swear, without the video I would have thought it was a dream. And I tried rationalizing it away.

It's weird that it started moving when I saw it. It's also weird that it was invisible to the naked eye and just hanging out.

I've always wanted to see one. And buying our house assumed I would. I thought the "thing" would come from the back of our house, which is woods. But it turns out, that's the spot I was standing when I saw this orb.