An unidentified object was sighted, that had an unusual appearance or performance. One object was observed by four witnesses for over 15 minutes.

Hynek: An associate laboratory director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his family went outside when his 11-year old son came inside and reported, "There's a flying saucer outside." After observing the object for 20 minutes with binoculars, the director rejected the possibility it could be an aircraft, based both by the strange trajectory of the light, and compared to an aircraft and helicopter that had flown over during the time the object was visible:

Coming out of the house, I got my small glasses to observe the object. I really didn't believe I was going to see anything. In the meantime, my 15-year-old boy went back into the house and got the Bausch and Lomb 6x30 binoculars. We both observed the object.

My very first impression was ... is it an extremely bright star? But that thought was dispelled almost immediately. The second thought -- searching for a logical explanation -- was that it might be a landing light of an aircraft. The next morning, I asked my oldest boy to describe his observations to me, and these checked with mine entirely.

I don't honestly see how I could call it an aircraft. Besides, I had both the plane and the helicopter for comparison. Oh, my wife said maybe it was a satellite. I said how could a satellite possibly go through the motions that this did?

…It was much brighter than Venus. It appeared as an intense white -- maybe with a slight yellowish tint -- source, probably not a pinpoint source. I would describe it just as a very small source in a very hot furnace, as a central source, white hot type of flame, and then with this peripheral color dancing around on the outside of it, the red and green -- the red bordered on the pink. The other thing we observed as we looked at the object through some small trees. It was quite evident that there was a wandering motion of the object with respect to the background of the trees ....

Q: How long did it stay in the hovering, wandering position?

A: Somewhere between five and ten minutes.

Q: When we talked about it before, you said something about it being an eerie kind of thing you had not experienced before. In fact, I think you said it was a sort of "radioactive" kind of thing. Can you go into that a little more?

A: I don't know why I said that except that the source was extremely intense, and it was of a color you would not expect to see generated by artificial means such as a lamp — or any known type of lamp.

Q: How would it have compared with a short circuit of electrical wires such as occurs in an ice storm?

A: There would be some similarity there except for the fluctuations of color. The central light was much more steady than you would experience in a thing like that.

Q: Do you suppose it could have been an experimental craft of some sort trying out strobe lights? Did it bear any resemblance to a strobe light?

A: No, it did not.

Q: Now let's go back. Was there any identifying sound?

A: None. None whatever.

Q: What about its later motion?

A: After observing the object for some five or ten minutes in its apparent hovering position and its wandering, it started to increase its altitude and travel toward the east; I would estimate its altitude went up to about 30 degrees, and it arrived at an azimuth of approximately 160 degrees, at which time it appeared to stop and hover again. This motion, although it did not seem to be in proximity to it, seemed to be coincidental with the passing of an airliner.

Q: I think this sort of reviews our previous discussion. I can't think of any salient facts we left out. Let's try to get the angular rate. We haven't gotten that down. When it was moving its fastest — apparent motion -- how would you...?

A: It was going somewhat, I would say, in excess of a degree per second. Something of that order of magnitude.

Google map of this location.