LEWISTON - Dr. Barry Chandler has seen the space shuttle in the sky at night, and plenty of meteor showers, and this, he says, was definitely nothing like those.

The Florida man looked up in the sky Friday night at 10:05 p.m., from his mother-in-law's lawn on Marble Street and saw a rough string of 10 to 15 lights traveling together in clusters.

"It was extremely unusual and I'm not prone to calling in things like this," Chandler said Monday.

He, his wife and mother-in-law watched them move from the southern corner of the sky to the north, finally fading from view, after about four minutes.

"They were fairly pulsing. It was like a flame but it wasn't; I can't describe it," Chandler said. The lights reminded him of the flames inside hot air balloons when they take off. They seemed to pulse.

"In Florida, we see meteor showers all the time. Even the space shuttle going up was not the same thing," he said.

Chandler, chief of neonatology at the Miami Children's Hospital, has a summer home in Poland Spring.

"I'm a very left-brained person; I like to be very analytical," he said. "I'm not a kook."

He's sure of what he saw.

Chandler called the National UFO Reporting Center. It hadn't received any other reports. Neither had the National Weather Service in Gray.

Meteorologist Michael Cempa said Friday night was clear. The recent meteor shower, which peaked Sunday, would look like bright streaks across the sky, not steady lights, he said.

The German Web site Heavens Above noted that iridium flares - sun reflecting off satellites - could be seen from Lewiston at 6:14 and 6:23 that night, but nothing later.

A spokesman at Brunswick Naval Air Station said it wasn't anything of theirs. A Hanscom Air Force Base spokeswoman didn't have any information.

Androscoggin County dispatch didn't take any calls reporting strange lights Friday night.

"It sounds strange," said Sheriff Guy Desjardins. "But strange things happen."