Anomalous Lights in the sky - South Africa 05/07/2008

Hi all,

I hope this is the right place to post this... It's a strange sighting i had last night (5th July), while visiting some friends...

I was visiting some friends who stay in Hartbeespoort, about 80-90km north-ish from my house in Johannesburg for the weekend.

Last night, about 21:30, i went outside to lock my car. They live on a farm, so there's not alot of artificial light for miles around.

After locking my car, i decided to stay and have a look at the stars for a while, as where i live right now being in the city, you never get a good look at the sky. I used to live in that area too, and enjoyed just going out at night and staring up...

I at first loked at orion, which was rather now in the North-Western area of the sky. Then I looked almost STRAIGHT upwards to (what I THINK was) the Southern Cross.

As I was looking at the cross, something peculiar happened. I saw a streak of light, that, at first, i took to be a metor going from west to east, across the Southern cross. It was a very faint, almost transparent-seeming streak zooting across the sky at INCREDIBLE speed. Normally meteors streak and disappear almost immediately again. THIS "light", however, just stopped in mid-flight, and stayed in one point for about 3 seconds, then blinked out.

At this point i still thought that it was a meteor, perhaps that the light was the meteor completely vaporizing in the atmosphere, and leaving a puff of glowing material in it's wake. what really made me realize that something "not-too-normal" was going on was when the same thing happened, slightly lower (towards the South) in the sky. Identical - A very fast, faint white streak, travelling West to east, suddenly stopping in mid-transit, and after about 3 seconds, blinking out.

This same ocurrence happened 5 times in total, within about 2 minutes. Although i say they all travelleg West to East, they were not moving on exactly the same heading, i.e some were moving in a slightly more south-going direction, and others more North-going, and all were coming from different places in the sky, not from the exact same spot. All of them stopped in roughly the same area of sky though, about the size of a CD-case held at arm's length.

I wish i could have taken footage of what i saw, but the only recording equipment i haad was my Phone's 3 Megapixel Camera, which doesn't like taking even Stills at night. I also doubt many more advanced cameras would get anything, as they were very faint - about as bright as most stars.

I'm not saying "Thems were Alee-anns that i seen". Yes, I AM a believer in ETIs to a certain extent, but i still maintain an open mind on most "encounters"...

There maybe is a natural explanation for what I saw last night. Does anybody here have any thoughts? Has anybody seen something similar? Any questions on the matter are also welcome.

>H<

[Edited] - got my cardinal points wrong - These lights were moving from WEST to EAST, not EAST to WEST... my bad.

[edit on 6-7-2008 by Havoc40k]