Indigo UFO mystery

On a warm, clear Florida evening while noshing kabob’s on the patio overlooking our canal, my husband and I, both pilots, noticed a few odd objects in the sky.

He pointed to the east, directly above the ocean. “Those two flashing white lights on that plane, isn’t normal.”  He paused for a kabob nibble, “It looks like the UFO I saw a few years ago while flying back from the Bahamas”

The white lights seemed to flash and hover as a distant projectile climbed while releasing a liquid spray. “What’s in front of the well-lit aircraft? Spewing blue liquid, like Windex?”  I pointed in the same direction. “It’s barely visible, but do you see it?”

My husband, Brad, and his sister sitting next to us at the table, both gazed to the east.  “It’s dumping something,” I insisted.

The sister squinted, also witnessing a spray.  We all watched the lights.  The dimmer object with a blue trail climbed into the into the darkening sky, the blinking white flashes faded.

Brad’s sibling motioned up, across the canal. “Is that the moon behind that cloud?”

A brightly lit cloud loomed above.  “I think so,” I nonchalantly answered.  Within a few minutes the cloud turned indigo blue.  Lower diaphanous, cotton-colored clouds passed below.

“I don’t think so,” My husband raised his voice and stood to examine  the mysterious, hypnotic blotch in the sky.  “It’s not moving like the other clouds.”  He turned toward the disappearing lights in the east, then back to the indigo glow.  We all reached for our iPad’s and iPhone’s to take pictures of the unidentified object.

His sister started tweeting and researching, I googled and posted on Facebook and my husband called the news station’s weather department.  We all chose our preferred means of communication.

My nineteen year old nephew ran though the back door, newly arriving home from work.  “Did you see the UFO?” He excitedly called out.

“Did Brad tell you?” I assumed.

“No, he’s on the phone. “I saw this blue cloud while driving home.  It looks like a Nebula.

“You watched too much star trek,” I unintentionally mumbled aloud.

He brought out his cell phone showing me his picture, comparing it to the ones we shot.  He was animated, talking Trekkie lingo. Brad’s sister called out locations of other tweets spotting a mysterious blue glow, ranging from Miami to Nantucket.  She then picked up a story on a possible rocket launch from Cape Canaveral.  Brad sent pictures to David Bernard, our local CBS weatherman.

A rocket launch would explain the strange lights and blue spray we saw, but what about the blue glowing non-moving cloud ?  We discussed the possible reasons.  Rocket fuel? After burners?  Did something go wrong, or blow up?  “Rocket’s never launch to the southeast,” Brad added with conviction.

The 11:00 news displayed his sister’s UFO picture from her tweet with acknowledgement.  They confirmed it was a military rocket launch from the cape in a joint effort with Australia for communication relating to Homeland Security.  Named the Delta IV.  My nephew insisted it had something to do with spying on the United States.  I sighed, internally laughing at his youth and imagination.

The following day we relayed the story to one of our employee’s and his response was, “Yeah, military launches always head to the southeast.”

“But what about the indigo glow?  Apparently the exhaust plume from the rocket formed a cloud of ice crystals 280,000 feet above the earth.  Which would explain why it seemed to loom over us.  Or so they say?