mystery of the colored flashing lights

Sorry for being a little off topic, but I think you will see why this
group is a good one for this post.

On Feb 18, 2007, I visited a pilot who lives in the Oakland, CA hills
about 5 nm north of KOAK. He related a story of having seen
multicolored flashing lights in the air at night in the general
direction of SF Bay. These lights appeared fairly motionless and at
first he thought they were a blimp of some sort. After watching for 10
minutes or so, he observed the lights change direction and move in a
westerly direction and a fairly high rate of speed, faster than a
blimp and about the speed of a jet if it was over the water. He
indicated that this happened a couple of nights in the preceding weeks
(Jan/Feb, 2007).

I thought perhaps he'd been reading too many sci fi books except that
later that night, I boarded a jet at KSFO. I happened to have a window
seat and as we turned onto 28R for our night departure, lo and behold
there it was at an angle of about 45 degrees to the runway. It was
hard to tell how far away it was but it was low to the horizon and
there were many flashing multicolored lights spread out over a small
area of the night sky.

This had to be plainly visible to any pilot flying that night. I know
there are quite a few Bay Area pilots that read this forum. Anyone
seen or heard of this? Any NOTAMS describe an activity that would be
compatible?

My pilot contact says that he has had no more sightings since Feb.