- An amateur stargazer said today he was baffled after
he saw two mysterious bright lights in the sky above his home, which vanished
before he could get a closer look.
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- "In more than 40 years of looking at the sky, I've
never seen anything like it," said Alan Toon, 60, of Park Estate,
Hetton.
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- "I've been an amateur astronomer since I was 13
so I know how to identify a plane or a satellite, but I couldn't tell you
what I saw up there, I'm just baffled by it.
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- "I thought I'd found a new supernova or something.
I knew that none of the planets pass through that part of the sky this
time of the year, and the lights weren't twinkling at all like any star."
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- Mr Toon opened his front door to empty the rubbish at
10.12pm on Sunday when he looked up and noticed the lights. But as he rushed
around to his back garden to take a better look, they disappeared.
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- He said: "I wanted to look at them around the back
as it's darker so they would be clearer, but in the 10 seconds or so it
took me to get there, the lights had vanished.
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- "It was very strange because there was no sound
and the lights had no rays coming off theml - but they were quite bright
and very close together.
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- "I scanned the sky for a long time, but there was
no sign of the lights," said the ex-fireman.
- "They appeared close to the Great Bear constellation
of stars but I didn't have time to get my telescope out."
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- Alan's wife Rosemary said: "He's not one for telling
fibs and I believe he saw something out there.
- "We'll have been married 40 years this year and
in all that time he's been into astronomy but he's never seen a UFO or
anything, but this got him hopping about with excitement.
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- "I don't think he slept very much that night, the
whole thing is very mysterious."
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- http://www.sunderlandtoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=1107&ArticleID=762449
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