I had just completed a college meteorology course where the professor encouraged students to look up once in a while to see the various stars and constellations visible to the naked eye. It was just after sunset in the late summer of 1970 on Paradise road west of Modesto, CA. I was a passenger in a pickup moving due west toward the Livermore foothills about 20 miles ahead. In the small valley on the other side lay the sprawling Laurence Livermore nuclear research facility. The clear twilight was dark enough to reveal what appeared to be an unusually bright and unfamiliar constellation of about six stars 30 degrees or so above the horizon. Though most appeared stationary, some of the "stars" were moving slowly at right angles to others. The sight was so unusual that I asked the driver to pull over to get a better look. We watched for about 15 minutes as these individual star-like objects moved, almost drifted -- not crossing paths-- but in no apparent relation to the others. A few minutes later, two of them slowly moved away from the others, further west in a straight line toward the SF Bay Area. Then, from the southeast near Merced (fyi, location of Castle AFB, the closest scramble-ready military base, also home to a B-52 squadron), we saw a large fixed-wing jet aircraft approaching high above heading directly toward this strange group of objects. Almost immediately, all of the objects began to disperse -- no longer moving slowly but streaking out of sight in separate directions within seconds. That was it. The jet plane moved through the now empty area and kept going. Nothing to see. submitted by /u/djtiamwhatisayuare [link] [comments]