Published: 3:11 PM 2/26/2010

Arkansas - 02-10-20

I was on the way home from church and was heading West out of Fort Smith on Hwy 64 and turned North on Hwy 64D and noticed looking East directly over Fort Smith a bright triangle pattern.

I am an amateur astronomer and one of the founders of the Ark/Okla Astronomical Society which we formed in 1985. We are a very active group with public viewing events and have worked with the local media on special events or call-ins about unusual sightings.

I am very experienced in observing the night sky, so when I saw this object I immediately stopped the car and started doing estimates. It was about 7:40 PM and the lights making up the triangle shape were bright red with an apparent magnitude between Jupiter and Venus in intensity.

The triangle shape was side ways pointing South with one light in the middle. It was about 5 degrees above the horizon, and clearly visible thru the sky glow of Fort Smith. At about 7:50 PM, the individual lights started to look like they were vibrating, then started flashing from red to white for about a minute.

The object had not moved any in all this time, so I called a co-worker who lives about 22 miles to the south-southwest of Fort Smith in Cameron, Ok. He immediately saw the object due East of his house as soon as he walked out.

He also was amazed how intense the red lights were, and described the pattern exactly the same as I saw it. This confirmed my belief the object was far East of Fort Smith at an high altitude for us to both see the exact pattern shape.

At this time, I decided to head directly towards the object and see if I can log some miles and see if the angle changes. At about 8:00 PM the object blinked out for about 30 seconds and came back on, but this time it made an elongated triangle pointing downward without the middle light.

The whole time I had my co-worker on the phone and we were seeing these events at the same time and with the same description.

At about 8:10 PM the objects blinked out and reappeared as a T-shape with 3 exactly distanced in a row with one directly below the center. At about 8:18 PM the objects blinked out and reappeared, except the bottom light was exactly between and below object one and two.

This object would slowly drift towards underneath object one, and when aligned would stop, then reverse course until it was under object number two and then reverse back again.

Then at about 8:35 PM the objects blinked out and we didn't see them again. I had traveled 14 miles thru heavy traffic and the last sight of the object was at the intersection of Hwy 22 and 96.

The objects at that location still were no higher than 22 degrees above the horizon, and I had covered 14 miles. By my best calculations, it would have put the objects probably over Mount Magazine at around 26,000 feet.

Mt. Magazine is the highest elevation between the Appalachians and the Rockies, and would be an ideal landmark from the air. Several days later I talked to several others who saw these objects and were afraid to say anything at the time in fear of ridicule.

I had contacted the local media which never responded to my question of these objects being reported, and I know at this time of night hundreds had to have seen it.