By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
Ryan (not his real name) lives on top of a hill, just south of Grayson, overlooking Grayson Lake. He reached out about a week ago, asking to discuss something he and his wife had each seen, on separate occasions and in different areas of the sky, that they couldn’t identify.
“About two weeks ago, while getting a glass of water at 4 a.m. my wife saw a shimmering white light, about the size of a car headlight, in the sky,” he wrote. “It was far enough above the horizon and treetops that it could not have been a distant house light.”
He said she observed it only through the kitchen window, but something about it disturbed her. Though she “had no idea what it was,” Ryan wrote, “she was afraid to step outside to look at it.”
“It remained stationary for 20-30 minutes, at approximately 20 degrees above the horizon, looking due south towards the lake.”
The light was still there when she went back to bed. But it wasn’t there any other night.
“I believed her, but nothing further happened. That is, until Sunday night (March 17) at approximately 10 p.m., she asked me to step out on the rear porch to look at something. I observed a light in the sky looking west at approximately 30 degrees.”
“To the naked eye,” he continued, “it was close to the size of say Venus. But it was clearly different enough from a star that I knew it was not a star. It appeared to twinkle. It was so interesting I got my binoculars to observe it. Looking through those, it had multicolor lights – red, yellow, blue, and more. They would twinkle and constantly move around within the circle.”
Ryan said he also looked at several other stars through his binoculars, to see if they appeared similarly, and they did not. He said he is also very familiar with airplanes, and their running lights.
“It was not an airplane, and it did not move for the 15 minutes that I observed it. The light formed a circle large enough to observe, but not dominate the sky.”
His wife had been observing it for about ten minutes before he joined her, and he said he did not observe any movement the entire time he watched it. He said he teased with her, “Well, I think I’ve just seen my first UFO or UAP.” When he checked again several hours later, before turning in for the night, it was still hanging there in the sky, “but appeared to have moved more westerly, since it was smaller.”
Based on the timeline and movement, he said, he had ruled out any possible airplanes or satellites as an explanation for the craft.
Ryan was brave enough to share his real name with me, and agreed to talk with me and let me check his credentials.
He was also open to rational explanations, and he wanted to know if anyone else had reported anything similar in the area. But he had some trepidation about coming forward.
“Now I know why people are afraid to report things like this, for fear people would think they are crazy,” Ryan said.
Ryan and I discussed possible explanations, like drones, but he dismissed that idea. Firstly, because his wife’s first observation, in the south, was at 4 a.m., but also because of their remote location.
Then there was the fact that the object they both saw in the west was completely stationary. While he believed there was some motion when he first observed it through his binoculars, he said he quickly determined that was because of his own movement with the binoculars, not the object itself.
“At first sighting through my binoculars, my object appeared to do (a zigzag motion). However, upon steadying the binoculars, the zigzag movement was (caused) by unstable binoculars.”
After examining the details shared by Ryan, and looking at possible explanations in the available astronomical data, we settled on a rational explanation for his sighting in the western sky. The comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, often described in literature as the “horned comet,” is currently moving towards Earth, and is expected to be nearest our Sun around the same time as the solar eclipse. The comet is on a 71-year orbit, meaning it was last visible to the naked human eye in 1953 – not the kind of object you see in the night sky on a regular basis.
Ryan said when he observed the object again, on March 21, “the light was again very near my original sighting in the sky, and based on the comet photos and sky location you sent me, I am now 90 percent certain I did originally, and the second time, see the comet. It twinkled to the naked eye. I was again using binoculars, which were very hard to stabilize, but I again saw multi-colors – but more than those mentioned in your link – and I did not observe a tail; however, again, that would be difficult to see with (binoculars).”
But, he said, this still doesn’t explain what his wife saw in the southern sky.
“What I saw, and what my wife saw in the south two weeks earlier, were completely different observations. So, that still leaves a big question as to what her sighting was.”
That mystery still remains unexplained, and Ryan would love to know if anyone else has seen similar lights – or has a rational explanation.
If you have seen something similar, and would like to share your experience with our readers, or simply with Ryan and his wife, please contact us via telephone, email, or via one of our social media accounts. We will gladly keep your name anonymous, or share your observations with Ryan and his family.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
