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.
"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.
"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 w
hat I saw up there, I'm just baffled by it.
"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."
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.
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.
"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.
"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."
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.
"I don't think he slept very much that night, the whole thing is very mysterious."
