The object appeared red like a brilliant ruby on July 4, 1978 about 9:00 PM, and was witnessed by a few thousand people.

I witnessed this event on the evening of July 4, 1978.  This was on the rooftop of a friend, very near Reseda Park in the SFV.  I told my friend, "We’re going to see a UFO tonight."  After the fireworks died down, and overhead aircraft thinned out, I turned around facing north and saw what looked like a red ruby in the sky, although its steady brilliance was like that of a red wine with light shining behind and through it.  I said to my friend, "There it is, there’s the UFO I told you we would see."
He said it was an airliner, but when he realized it wasn’t moving, he guessed it might be a blimp.  We were probably looking up at it 30 degrees.  It began moving toward the east, gradually, slowly, and then stopped.  It did this several times over a period of about ten minutes.  By the time it was in the SE sky, and suddenly became a pinpoint of light, my friend could not see it anymore, because he had taken his eyes off of it.  I was fixed on it.  I thought it might be rapidly ascending upward.  But after a few minutes, it suddenly manifested its original diameter and circumference.  It appeared as the original ruby red when we first saw it, changed to a brilliant orange, then to yellow, and lastly to a pure pearl white before disappearing.  About ten minutes later, it reappeared in a NE direction, and both my friend and I watched it suddenly shift from a round orb or oval to a red semi-circular arc, followed instantly by a neon-blue flash, before disappearing.  The event was reported in a local newspaper, and I was quoted in two paragraphs.  An airline pilot, I learned from the writer of the news article, who was not quoted in the paper, told the reporter that he had observed the UFO and estimated it was 250 feet in diameter.  My next door neighbor, and his friend from down the street, were standing in my front yard looking straight up at what he said was a very large brilliant orange ‘ball’ of light.  The reporter told me that some officials were saying college students from a local city ! college were releasing gas filled balloons, timed to go off.  But the steadiness of the colors, and the size of the object, as witnessed by my next-door neighbor, a professional pilot, and myself compel me to believe that this was not some prank, but a real UFO sighting.