Mystery object in sky has Arizona buzzing

I walked out of Walgreens tonight and looked to the northwest to see this extremely bright object reflecting the setting sun's light. There was no way it was a planet or star. I seriously doubted it was the space station. The object never moved. When I got home I looked online to see if there was anything (Google) and there wasn't yet. I checked azcentral.com and sure enough, it has been all over the state.


Looking through the telephoto lens it looked like a lit up triangle. When I took some shots and underexposed them by two f-stops and enlarged the photo, the object looks much more like a high altitude weather balloon.

View from my driveway looking northwest at abour 7:30 AZ time.

Zoomed in and photo enlarged. Looks like a weather balloon to me.

Mystery object in sky has Arizona buzzing
by Heather Hoch - May. 18, 2009 06:00 PM
The Arizona Republic


UFO sightings from Scottsdale to Sedona had several skeptics and believers keeping their eyes on the skies Monday afternoon.

The object has been described as clear, spherical, and stationary from different people who saw it.

Ian Gregor, spokesperson from the Federal Aviation Administration, said the object appears to be a balloon. It was not showing up on FAA radar, which Gregor said could mean it is a small, non-metallic object. Gregor said he has been getting calls about the object all afternoon, but likely will not be able to actually confirm the object's origins.
National Weather Service officials said that the object is not one of the agency's weather balloons.

Marshall Valentine works in an office off Scottsdale Road and Acoma Drive and said he and about five other co-workers spotted the object high in the sky around 2 p.m. He said the object stayed in place for over an hour.

“It looks like someone blew a bubble in the sky and it stayed there,” Valentine said. “A plane flew under it and it looked like it was a mountain higher than a plane flies.”

Similar descriptions of an unidentified flying, clear orb were also reported out of Sedona.

Jennifer McCoy, who runs the UFO Store in Sedona with her husband, said a local resident told her about the object in the sky at about 2 p.m. She said she went into the parking lot and saw the object in the cloud line. It was about the same time Valentine spotted the object over Scottsdale.

McCoy said the object “looked like the gigantic bubble from the Wizard of Oz.” She also said it stayed in one place for a while.

McCoy said she thinks some people will be skeptical of her report because “it's just the UFO Store seeing a UFO,” but McCoy said the other reports out of both Scottsdale and Sedona give the sighting some credence.