I gotta stop flying the TR-3B outta Tonopah outside the test range.
Oh wait, I wasn’t supposed to mention that. Please ignore.
Must be a pilot thing. “Oh that’s awesome.”
Daughter was a flight nurse. Night vision equipment was well worth the investment in terms of safety and as well as the “wow” factor.
Probably a helium balloon trailing an infrared cyalume lightstick.
It wouldn’t be detectable on radar and you wouldn’t be able to see it in the dark with the unaided eye. Image Intensification (II^2) NODs also see in the near-infrared spectrum, which is why all the US military’s combat uniforms now have IR-reflective tabs on them. So good guys with II^2 NODs can tell the sheep from the goats.
With NODs you see shooting stars regularly, all night every night, because there are tiny particles continually entering earth’s atmosphere and burning up but making a light hundreds of times too faint for the human eye to see.
And they can say nothing about what it was, too bad.