Towards Otley Chevin, Yorkshire, England Massive Orange Glow With Smoke Trail

Posted: March 14, 2009

Date: January 31, 2009
Time: Approx: 7:00 p.m.

Hi, Tonight (Jan 31 2009) at about 7.00 pm we were sat in our lounge looking out towards Otley Chevin. We can see the aircraft approach the airport from the Menston direction but suddenly from an unusual approach was a massive orange glow which seemed to have a smoke trail behind it, which glowed very brightly then seemed to turn away and disappear. We both were at our lounge window at this point and our neighbour next door was also at hers wondering as we were what it was. Did anyone else witness this, what was it?

We tried to contact LBA in case an aircraft was having problems but their contact number is an answering machine and we didn't want to contact the non emergency police number in case they thought we were a bit daft.

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UFOINFO Note: As with other similar reports I asked the witness to have a look at the UFO Balloons website to see if this is what might have been seen and received the following reply:

Hi John, we have looked at this website again, we did look last night, just to double check and it definitely wasn't one of the balloons/lanterns.

It's hard to gauge the size but for us to have seen it from our lounge window, it will have been up to a mile away or so otherwise the Chevin would have blocked our view.

We live adjacent to one of the flight paths to Leeds and Bradford Airport in Yeadon, West Yorkshire, so are used to seeing planes coming in to land and recognise their lights and the size of the plane because of the shape the lights make when they are approaching. This though was coming in from the wrong direction (which sometimes does happen) and was visible for 15-20 seconds. It was unusual because the light was bright orange and circular and much larger than plane lights. When the light didn't come into focus as two lights which happens with a plane, we both got up to get a closer look. We honestly thought it was a plane but it wasn't the right shape, it was circular so then we thought maybe it was a helicopter in trouble. Looking closely out of the window once could see a black tail of smoke we think behind it. We appreciate it was dark but one could definitely see a darker shadow between it because the orange was so bright.

Then it just simply disappeared.

We will keep our eyes on the local news and if there's an explanation we will let you know.

Thanks.

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Additional information:

Dear John,

We just wanted to let you know that there was an article in the Yorkshire Evening Post last night regarding similar sightings, although they saw several orange balls we only saw one, there is a picture included in the article taken from the MOD website similar to the one they saw, the brightest ball in the picture is similar to the one we saw too. Thanks.

Thank you to UFOINFO for this report. http://www.ufoinfo.com/