Red orb spotted over Scottish Highlands - Fort William area, 8th November evening

I was hiking near Ben Nevis on Tuesday evening (8th November, around 6:30 PM, just after dusk) with two mates. We stopped for a rest on a ridge overlooking Glen Coe when we all noticed a reddish-orange orb moving slowly across the sky from northeast to southwest.

The thing that struck me as odd was the colour and the way it moved. It was definitely moving slower than any aircraft would, almost hovering at times. The light seemed to pulse slightly. It was visible for maybe two minutes before it disappeared behind a cloud bank. We all saw it clearly - not a quick glimpse, but a proper sustained observation.

Has anyone else had sightings in the Scottish Highlands? The area's pretty remote, so reports might be underrepresented simply because fewer people are around to witness things. Also - could this be a military exercise of some kind? There's RAF activity in Scotland.

The Highlands definitely get activity. There's less light pollution and fewer people watching, which means either fewer sightings are reported, or more are happening and we never hear about them. Hard to say. The colour you're describing (reddish-orange) is common in evening sightings and can sometimes be explained by the angle of twilight sun hitting standard aircraft, but the pulsing is interesting.

Fort William's not far from RAF Kinloss and RAF Lossiemouth, so military exercises are definitely a possibility. But a proper slow-moving pulsing orb doesn't match standard aircraft or helicopters. If you've got photos or video, post them up. Even blurry footage helps with pattern matching.

Could be a Chinese lantern. They drift slowly, can look reddish-orange, and the pulsing could be the flame flickering. People often spot them at altitude in the Highlands and assume they're something anomalous because of the remote location. Not saying that's definitely what you saw, but it's worth considering.

The thing that struck me as odd was the colour and the way it moved.

Three independent witnesses is actually good evidence. If you can all describe the object and its movement consistently, that carries more weight than a solo sighting. I'd recommend documenting what you each remember right now, before details get contaminated by discussion. Then compare notes.

The Highlands are brilliant for this sort of thing. So much open sky and so few people looking. There's probably all sorts of stuff happening up there that nobody ever reports. If you're hiking in that area again and see anything else, definitely come back and post about it. The more data points we get, the better patterns emerge.