WATCH NOW: Want to know about the UFO seen over Martinsville? Google the answer – Martinsville Bulletin

Photo taken of high-elevation Google balloon near Cary, North Carolina

The red tracking indicators shows a Google high-elevation balloon passed directly over Martinsville on Monday.

There have been various reports of people in the region seeing unidentified objects in the sky on Monday. Lisa Rich of Cary, N.C., about 100 miles southeast of Martinsville, managed to take a picture of one.

Chief Meteorologist Brent Watts with WDBJ-Ch. 7 in Roanoke went online identifying the objects as "high altitude balloons that are part of a research project by Google's parent company, Alphabet, to create wireless network across the globe in places where towers can't easily be constructed."

The helium balloons can be tracked in real time using Flightradar24's service.

The Bulletin discovered that one of the balloons, HBAL217, traveled directly over the city of Martinsville on Monday while travelling in a southerly direction at about 11 knots ground speed and at a height of 61,600 feet.

HBAL217 was just south of Charlotte, N.C., at noon on Tuesday.

NASA officials say anything large enough and above 50,000 feet is visible over a wide area around its flight path. That path entered the U.S. from Canada on Sunday near Ohio and then made its way into West Virginia, across southwest Virginia, including Martinsville, and then into North Carolina.

"Under just the right conditions, the high altitude balloons can be visible through a pair of binoculars when sunlight hits them just right as they float at around 50,000 feet" Watts said. "For perspective, most commercial aircraft fly between 30,000 and 38,000 feet."

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WATCH NOW: Want to know about the UFO seen over Martinsville? Google the answer - Martinsville Bulletin