Large, Dull, Fuzzy Orange Disc Seen Over Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK
I cannot remember the exact date, it was around 1995. I had had too much coffee that evening and I was reading an astronomy book in the kitchen at about 2 o'clock in the morning, and I had been popping outside every 10 minutes or so and looking up at the sky, trying to learn the names of the constellations. This was my parents' house in Maidenhead and I was living at home at the time. Now you know how you often look up at night and you see one of those very high, fast-moving dots that are obviously satellites; from my experience if you spend a while stargazing you're almost guaranteed to see one. Anyway on this particular night, I also caught sight of what I thought was one of these 'satellites.' However, now imagine the same dot *suddenly* get bigger and faster *simultaneously.* This gave the appearance of something that had descended very rapidly indeed.
Then I waited a few seconds and it descended again, now moving faster; a brighter, larger dot of light, of the kind of size and speed you would associate with a low-flying light aircraft, but it had no flashing lights. Finally, the object suddenly 'descended' again into a large, dull, fuzzy orange disc; absolutely featureless.
It was difficult to tell the height of the object, maybe 300 feet? Now the key here is the object then started to perform 'arc' manoeuvres in the sky. To best describe this, imagine someone shining an orange-coloured torch light against a wall, and flicking it back and forth with the wrist in an arc, somewhat as a child does with a sparkler, giving the impression of something moving at an unimpressive speed but with *immediate* acceleration.
I watched it for about 5 minutes as it described these arcs of various widths, desperately trying to think what it could be. There were no orange streetlights, and there was no cloud cover at all onto which a projector could have been aimed. I *think* it was in the winter months as in the summer the view would have been obscured by trees at the end of the garden. After about 5 minutes, the object went behind the 'horizon' which was actually just a medium-sized industrial complex. The object might not have gone very far, but was now out of the line of sight. (The industrial area was nothing special, Brylcreem products were on the site, also another company called Elay Enfield Tubes.) I'm afraid to say I think I managed to slightly mis-report this before; I stated the area as Vandervell products but that was the neighbouring industrial area where my dad worked, not the one directly behind the house. The road where the factories were based was called Norreys Drive.
Anyway, the object was now out of sight, so I went back in, very puzzled, and carried on reading the astronomy book, popping out occasionally to view the stars and hoping for another glimpse of the object. Finally, after about half an hour, I went outside, gazed for a few moments and to my delight, the object reappeared from behind the backdrop of factories, still describing arcs in the sky. After a minute or so it then stopped, and proceeded to ascend smoothly and rapidly, this time to the kind of 'height' and luminosity that you might ascribe to a mid-level commercial aircraft, changing colour from a dull orange to more of a white dot as it ascended. Finally, the bright dot accelerated unbelievably quickly and flew across the sky at precisely the kind of ultra-high speed you would normally associate with a shooting star. This was a clear sky, no clouds, very little light pollution, about 2:30 in the morning, facing approximately East, about 25 years ago. The object accelerated away roughly Northwards.
I was really quite spooked by the incident, but I soon forgot about it, as you do, and it wasn't until a year or so later that I read a newspaper article about historic UFO sightings that it all came back to me. This was a 'feature' story in - I believe, either the Daily Mail or the Mail on Sunday, and it was one of those big 4-page feature type stories they run from time to time. Anyway, it was a big feature about historical UFO sightings and one really caught my eye - it described a UFO encounter witnessed by the pilots of a squadron of US airplanes in the 1960's I think, and one pilot's description of the object and its flight characteristics was *precisely* the same thing that I had witnessed - he described it as having descended rapidly, performed random arcs, before shooting off again at incredible speed. I've always meant to revisit this article, but I'm afraid I'm pretty clueless when it comes to making historical searches in newspapers, maybe at some point in the future the British Library will finally get all historical newspapers onto their database and I can do a search again.
So, for what its worth, that's my record of the sighting. Maybe it will come in use at some point when cross-referencing sighting types or what have you. The postcode of the house if you want to check on a map was SL6 3EJ, situated by the A329M motorway (The motorway was behind the house, and the industrial estate behind that.)
Anyway, all the best.
Nick.
P.S. Disappointingly I've never seen anything like it since. I was lucky enough a few years back to see a 'fireball,' ie a meteor skipping off the the atmosphere (or maybe could have been a bit of space junk burning up) which was quite spectacular, but nothing like the UFO sighting. My wife actually spotted the fireball and called me out to see it.
