Hamburg, Pennsylvania - 06-27-12

The night of June 27th, 2012 at around 10:45 PM. I went outside for a cigarette and to watch the stars as I do several times every night when I spotted what I thought was a plane.

I was facing west and this thing was hovering about 35 to 40 degrees off the horizon and seemed closer than an aircraft should be (maybe about a quarter mile away if not closer).

But, the more I stared at it I noticed that it had 3 horizontal round white lights in a straight line with red and green lights underneath flashing at a very fast rate.

The 3 white lights did not blink and I could see them lit the entire time and remained in a straight line. I believe the 3 lights were portholes since they were not very bright. The object was moving slowly but strangely.

I went inside to grab my binoculars and came back out and the object was still hovering in about the same spot but, doing a circular motion and moving up and down and sideways. I focused the binoculars on it and played with the zoom in and out trying to get a clear look when I noticed the 3 white lights started to turn vertically and then kept turning until it did a 360 degree turn.

This is when I went inside and told my husband to come outside. He tried using the binoculars and even went inside to get his hunting spotting scope but could not get a perfect view of it since we have a light on a pole close to our deck which makes it harder to see the sky.

He still thought it was a strange sight and not a plane. I had a better view of it since I was a little further away from that pole lamp. We watched it for several minutes before it finally took off slowly and finally went behind a tree where we could still see some lights through the leaves before it finally disappeared from our view.

The whole episode must have lasted about 10 minutes and I could never get a clear view of the body of the object because the green and red lights were flashing so bright and fast (and I was shaking a bit) but it seemed to have a dark (maybe black, gray or silver) body.

I could not tell the shape of the body but if I had to guess it appeared to be a cigar or disc shape.

I have never seen anything like this in my entire life. Every night I watch the planes, stars, planets, satellites and occasionally shooting stars in the sky and am very familiar with objects in the night sky but this was a new experience for me. It was both exciting and a bit scary.