“It was hard to tell the size,” Charles Cobb, a pilot with 45 years of experience, expressed to the Charlotte Observer.
The US veteran explained that he was checking on his 1940 Piper Cub plane at the Silver Creek Airport in Morganton, North Carolina, on June 12 when he spotted the object dropping to approximately 15,000 feet before then shooting up to some 30,000 feet.
“The fact that it could zoom up almost out of sight,” showed that it was something out of the ordinary, he said.
To the best of his recollection, Cobb assessed the foreign object to be “a huge kite with a tail.” He also noted the presumed craft had an “opaque” center.
Unfortunately, only one of the photos produced by the 88-year-old was made available by the Charlotte Observer. It’s unclear if he captured video footage of the object, but he claims to have watched it for 15 to 20 minutes.
The photograph was taken at 11:18 a.m. local time.
Longtime pilot photographs mysterious orange orb in daytime sky over NC mountains https://t.co/yjnz4QT4bQ #ufo #ufos #ufosighting
— Jason McClellan Ⓥ (@Acecentric) October 25, 2020
Bernard Arghiere, board advisor with the Astronomy Club of Asheville, confirmed to the Charlotte Observer that there is no known astronomical event that occurred on that date.
“There is no reported astronomical object, certainly not a comet, in the sky that would appear that bright on that June 12, 2020, date,” Arghiere said in an email. “There were no comets then that would be that bright, so they would be visible in the daytime sky.”
At the same time, the expert expressed doubt in the object belonging to aliens.
“It really looks to me more like sunlight reflected off a distant jet and its related condensation trail; typically, that would disappear from sight in less than 20 minutes,” he explained. “Good luck getting a definitive answer on this one.”
Cobb disagreed with Arghiere’s assessment.
“No reflection off a jet,” he said. “This object while zooming to incredible heights, and coming back down, was always heading in a northerly direction as the photos show, yet it remained in the general area that I was viewing.”
“A plane of any sort passing through my viewing area would have been out of sight in a matter of a few minutes,” Cobb asserted.
He added that none of his “flying friends,” including a retired American Airlines and US Air Force pilot who flew F-4 Phantoms, “have any idea as to what it was.”
