[I received this report from a reliable Pittsfield resident a couple of days. While not reported to me until a week or so after it occured, this incident took place in the wake of several noted unexplained aerial sightings over Berkshire County in early August, which were reported on WAMC on 8/10/11: http://bit.ly/ngcWR1 ]
"I've been kind of embarrassed to admit this. VERY late at night on August 10 / early AM of August 11, I went out to have a cigarette. In the sky above my neighbor's house across the street, I saw what looked like a very big and bright star. I wondered about it being a planet or something and watched it for a while. I became aware that it moved in a peculiar pattern - if you put your index finger in the air and draw a U and then have your finger revers direction and do this several times, then that's something like how it moved.
I got my camera and opted to forgo the tripod because it's in the bottom of my closet (buried!) and didn't want to miss it altogether.
The attached picture isn't a great representation of it - it really looked kind of circular like a star but bigger and brighter. To get a picture, I had to use a slow shutter speed and I think the m otion of the object and perhaps my makeshift "tripod" (the wooden handrails of my front steps) might have conspired to make it blurry.
Do you have any software of means of getting a better look at what this really is? I wondered about a helicopter, but really think it's a stretch.
I took a puff of my cigarette, looked up and it was gone altogether so I have no idea where it went or how it went or anything.
Again, I am really embarrassed about this but I think curiosity is trumping the embarrassment."