Appearance / Description of Object(s)

The color of the lights was neutral white, just like police helicopter spotlights, and the object was too far away to be discrenable as anything more than an unidentified light source.

Size of Object(s)

The light source was a mere dot in the sky, but the divergent light beams must have been several miles long, and of an intensity I personally have not seen before or since,

Distance to Object(s) & Altitude

Altitude of 10 to 20 thousand feet.

Description of Area / Surroundings

the sighting occurred in a rural area with little light pollution to interfere with night sky observations

Full Description & Details

About 8pm on a clear starlit night, myself and three other witnesses observed a point source of light in the sky which emittied two divergent beams of light, each similar but tremendously brighter and more focused to the single beam "night sun" spotlight of the police helicopters that patrol American cities. The altitude of the apparition must have been several thousand feet as the divergent beams were to high up to illuminate anything on the ground.

As we stood and watched the twin beams of light, which diverged at an approximate 20 degree angle from one another, an illuminated paraschute-shaped emission billowed out between the divergent beams of light, starting at the point source of light, and growing larger in diameter as its distance to the point source increased. The whole sequence of events took about ten minutes, and culminated with the sudden extinction of the luminous formation, which had been moving very slowly accross the night sky.

I thought at first that what we saw was the space shuttle was making a re-enrtry into earth's atmosphere over Africa, but on reflection, ruled out that theory since, to the best of my knowlege, the Space Shuttle is not equipped with a pair of tightly-focused multi-million candlepower spotlights.