Appearance / Description of Object(s)

Light emitted almost the same color and intensity of a star, the flashes I described were like the brilliance and color of the North star. As stated before, from the naked eye it looked like what I'd expect Saturn to look like if it was viewable from Earth, in the binoculars it looked totally different, brilliant and large, luminious and the randomly occurring sparkles of light were truely breath taking. This is why I am astounded that at least some report of anything isn't available in the local media. Even if it was a mocking "Object mistaking for a UFO was....". The middle darker areas were not visable to the naked eye, only when I put my glasses on them could I make out details, but the details made this object more unbelievable rather than dispelling the mystery.

Size of Object(s)

Huge, larger than anything I have ever seen in the sky, and as an Air Force vet, I have seen thousands of objects in the sky, day and night. Bigger than a blimp, bigger than a C5a

Distance to Object(s) & Altitude

Maybe 8 miles from me when I made the initial view, probably 1500 to 2500 feet above the ground

Description of Area / Surroundings

Desert, close to but west of I10, urban, but new urban. Structures and neighborhoods new. Used to be farming/ranch land in the last decade.

Full Description & Details

Unbelievable to me still. Last night I was on the back patio lifting weights when I saw a slow luminious object in the western sky. At first I thought it was a helicopter hovering west of my house. As the object grew brighter, or I focused on it more it began to resemble a blurry saturn. I stood and looked at it a bit, and then climbed a ladder to my roof. It really did look like saturn. I yelled for my 2 daughters to come outside and look. When they saw it they were unsure of what they were seeing. I had them run into the house and get me my binoculars and the phone. When I viewed the object through the binoculars, that's when I became really excited. I yelled at them "It's a UFO, it's a UFO!" I called my brother-in-law and yelled at him to run outside and view this object.

What I saw through the binoculars was a cigar shaped luminious object with dark areas in the middle, which to me looked like a row of windows, and the surface of the object was flashing bright and brilliant lights that resembled the way a diamond sparkles under the lights at a jewelers. The flashes were not concentrated at any one particular spot, they randomly flashed from all points of the object in no particular order or in no pattern. Because of the 2-dimentional nature of objects viewed through binoculars, I could not tell if the craft was a disk, blimp shape (albeit more cigar than blimpish) or what the 3 dimentional shape of this object was, but it was incredibly large and beautiful. My children stood on the patio watching the object until they could no longer see it because of the trees in our yard and the neighbors yard. I managed a total viewing time of approximately 5 minutes, during which time I spoke with my brother-in-law, and later my wife (who was still at work)

My brother-in-law did not get a chance to view the object with anything but the naked eye, and his viewing was delayed because his view from the front yard was obstructed with neighboring homes and vegatation, so while he did see the object, by the time he was on his roof, the best viewing had passed. His first guess was a blimp, but the size, speed and elavation of the object kept that from making him sure of what this object was.

This occurred at roughly 8:45 P.M.

I called the local television station and asked if anyone has reported an object floating over Tucson and the peron said no. My wife contacted another local television station from where she works and the answer was the same. This is unbelievable to me because of the size and relatively long viewing time of this object. I am scouring the local media here today in hopes of some kind of reference to this object no matter what the reference might be.

Can sighting be explained as any conventional man-made or natural object?

If this was a blimp, then it was unbelievably large and fast. It travel about 40 miles in 5 or 6 minutes while I viewed it. The desert air allows for great distances of viewing without humidity related hinderences. Also, any commercial blimp like this would be very expensive, and traveling a route towards Mexico where no advertising benefit would be possible isn't something anyone would try to do, this would be a show piece.

Witness Background

IT system administrator, past industrial 21 ton crane (overhead) operator, 10 years in the copper business, and very happy to be an IT worker now NOT working in that type of environment!

Views on UFOs, before and after sighting

I have read a bit, but more as a passing curiosity

Reported Sighting? 

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