I, along with my then partner, witnessed an orange sphere in the early hours of the morning which was visible for approximately 30 mins.I was awoken by my then partner (a staunch sceptic). He was in a state and frantically gesturing for me to go outside and saying, "You need to come outside and tell me what ((words deleted)) this is." I followed him out into our front yard and he pointed up above the opposing neighbour's home and asked me, "What ((words deleted)) is that?" In the sky, heading in an upward, vertical position was a perfect sphere about the size of a ping pong ball (perspective wise). It was a pale, pastel luminous orange but in the 'centre' of the sphere was a pale blue movement, much like the movement inside a novelty electrostatic lamp. only it was a single bolt of 'electricity' which snaked upward and had small 'offshoots'. At no time was the 'electricity' outside of the sphere. The 'electricity' was slow moving and certainly beautiful to watch, but all the while the sphere was moving upward. At no time did either of us hear anything. It was completely silent.The sphere was approximately one metre above (perspective wise) my opposing neighbour's one story home with tiled peaked roof, but my partner stated that when he went outside he saw it rising above the house, as if it was right behind it. It was very difficult to judge distance, but we felt it was only three or four kilometres away.When my partner first saw it he said it was the size of a truck tyre, but later stated that he came and got me within a few seconds of first sighting it, and given that when I was watching it it was only reducing in size marginally I think it may have been quite a bit smaller than a truck tyre when he first sighted it.Over a period of approximately thirty minutes it continued to reduce in size, until the 'electricity' was no longer visible and eventually until the orange sphere resembled a white light. It is very hard to determine how high in the sky it was at this point, however, it seemed to appear as though it was hitting the stratosphere and indeed as soon as it did so, it shot very rapidly in a western direction. At this point it was becoming very small, but with a strained eye was still visible a good five minutes later, until it simply became too small to see anymore.I made an anonymous report to an Australian UFO hotline soon after the sighting, as theories in guarded conversations with family were that it could have been a gas ball, or a weather balloon, however, the hotline attendee seemed to discount both of those theories quite confidently. I would be interested to see if there have been any other reports of a similar sighting, as I have never read about or heard of anyone reporting one, especially with the 'electricity'. It may be that similar sightings of orange spheres were already too high in the atmosphere to see the blue 'electricity'.((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD))