Appearance / Description of Object(s)

Dark Triangle, Black circles under each corner, square 'door' panel in the middle bottom. Back side had row of 'vents' (4) and the only hint of a light was a dull red glow on each end of the back.

Size of Object(s)

Decent view as it was about the size of my palm at arms length. I estimate it was the size of a small house? 45-50ft.

Description of Area / Surroundings

Suburbs. Night time, little to no moon light ( did not see the moon that night). No clouds noted. Back yard of house (small yard, fenced, a few tall trees, power/ telephone lines on east side on fence). About 3 blocks away is the North side runway of an airport (Sacramento Executive Airport), which is primarily small planes and private jets, it occasionally hosted the Goodyear blimp.

Full Description & Details

This happened around a school holiday, I lost my original date/time sketch, but I recall scanning the newspapers early October 1973, there was a Texas UFO in the paper around 10/4-5, so I fix this sighting at 10/3-4/1973.

I had been doing some astronomical viewing for about 30-45 minutes, I stopped to user averted vision to find the andromeda galaxy as my next target. I was then that out of ly peripheral vision to my right (South), I thought there was a cloud moving S>N (a bit fast for no wind). Once I turned my attention to it I saw it was a dark triangle, moving moderately slow, silent. Altitude and size is hard to estimate, but our house is on a landing path to a local airport, so planes come from a NE to SW path. Using that the object was just shy of my palm at arms length, so maybe a few hundred feet altitude and 45-40ft in size.

It was illuminated by ambient street/building lights - otherwise it was just a shade off from the night sky. It had a black circle each corner underside, a square panel under the middle, the backside (which I saw a bit of as it had passed zenith to the north) looked like a row of vents, with a dull red glow at each end (which was more apparent as it disappeared to the NNW).

At one point when it passed overhead, it made a hiss sound and maybe pivoted a bit to go from N to NNW, one of the 'vents' (right most) had changed appearance at this point. Other than that it was totally silent. The silent glide and design is what impressed me the most.

The sighting lasted about 2-3 minutes; right after I went to look at the clock and it was about 9:10pm.

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

Only man made if it was a non-jet, non-ballistic propelled craft. I don't think a balloon could travel as quick and straight. It was a hard object, nothing above it if it was a balloon payload.

Witness Background

A the time I was in my early teens, but was very studied in science, math, and astronomy. My current profession is in Information Technology.

Views on UFOs, before and after sighting

I had been interested in the subject since early age, had read a couple of books. I was very avid about the subject since.

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