Phoenix Lights
Encyclopedia
The Phoenix Lights were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects observed in the skies over the U.S. state
s of, Arizona
, Nevada
and the Mexican
state of Sonora
on March 13, 1997.
Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 MST, in a space of about 300 miles, from the Nevada
line, through Phoenix
, to the edge of Tucson
. There were two distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area. The United States Air Force
identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog
aircraft that were on training exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range
in southwest Arizona. Witnesses claim to have observed a huge carpenter's square-shaped UFO, containing lights or possibly light-emitting engines. Fife Symington, the governor at the time, was one witness to this incident; he later called the object "otherworldly."
The lights were reported to have reappeared in 2007 and 2008, but these events were quickly attributed to (respectively) military flares dropped by fighter aircraft at Luke Air Force Base and flares attached to helium balloons released by a civilian.
, Nevada
. He said it was about the "size of a (Boeing
) 747
", sounded like "rushing wind", and had six lights on its leading edge. The lights reportedly traversed northwest to the southeast.
An unidentified former police officer from Paulden
, Arizona
is claimed to have been the next person to report a sighting after leaving his house at about 20:15 MST (8:15 PM MST [7:15 PM PST]). As he was driving north, he allegedly saw a cluster of reddish or orange lights in the sky, comprising four lights together and a fifth light trailing them. Each of the individual lights in the formation appeared to the witness to consist of two separate point sources of orange light. He returned home and through binoculars watched the lights until they disappeared south over the horizon.
and Prescott Valley
. At approximately 20:17 MST, callers began reporting the object was definitely solid because it blocked out much of the starry sky as it passed over.{http://www.phoenixlightsufo.com/ Tim Ley, eyewitness, in his own words.}
John Kaiser was standing outside with his wife and sons in Prescott Valley, when they noticed a cluster of lights to the west-northwest of their position. The lights formed a triangular pattern, but all of them appeared to be red, except the light at the nose of the object, which was distinctly white. The object, or objects, which had been observed for approximately 2–3 minutes with binoculars, then passed directly overhead the observers, they were seen to "bank to the right", and they then disappeared in the night sky to the southeast of Prescott Valley. The altitude could not be determined, however it was fairly low and made no sound whatsoever.
The National UFO Reporting Center
received the following report from the Prescott area:
, six people saw a large cluster of lights while driving northbound on Highway 69.
about 65 miles away from them. At first they appeared to them as five separate and distinct lights in an arc shape like they were on top of a balloon, but they soon realized the lights appeared to be moving towards them. Over the next ten or so minutes they appeared to be coming closer and the distance between the lights increased and they took on the shape of an upside down V. Eventually when the lights appeared to be a couple of miles away the witnesses could make out a shape that looked like a carpenter's square with the five lights set into it, with one at the front and two on each side. Soon the lights appeared to be coming right down the street where they lived about 100 to 150 feet above them, traveling so slowly it appeared to hover and was silent. The lights then seemed to pass over their heads and went through a V opening in the peaks of the mountain range towards Squaw Peak Mountain
and toward the direction of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
. Witnesses in Glendale, a suburb northwest of Phoenix, saw the object pass overhead at an altitude high enough to become obscured by the thin clouds; this was at approximately between 8:30 and 8:45 pm.
area who stopped his car at a payphone to report the incident. "[The] young man, en route to Los Angeles
, called from a phone booth to report having seen a large and bizarre cluster of stars moving slowly in the northern sky".
activity in the area. On April 22, 2008, a resident of Phoenix told a newspaper that the lights were nothing more than his neighbor releasing helium balloons with flares attached. This was confirmed by a police helicopter. The following day a Phoenix resident who declined to be identified in news reports stated he had attached flares to helium balloons and released them from his back yard.
equipment.
and the History Channel as part of their UFO documentary programming.
The most frequently seen sequence shows what appears to be an arc of lights appearing one by one, then going out one by one. UFO advocates claim that these images show that the lights were some form of "running light" or other aircraft illumination along the leading edge of a large craft (estimated to be as large as a mile in diameter) hovering over the city of Phoenix. Other similar sequences reportedly taken over a half hour period show differing numbers of lights in a V or arrowhead array. Thousands of witnesses throughout Arizona also reported a silent, mile wide V or boomerang shaped craft with varying numbers of huge orbs. A significant number of witnesses reported that the craft was silently gliding directly overhead at low altitude. The first-hand witnesses consistently reported that the lights appeared as "canisters of swimming light", while the underbelly of the craft was undulating "like looking through water". However, skeptics claim that the video is evidence that mountains not visible at night partially obstructed views from certain angles, thereby bolstering the claim that the lights were more distant than UFO advocates claim.
UFO advocate Jim Dilettoso claimed to have performed "spectral analysis
" of photographs and video imagery that proved the lights could not have been produced by a man-made source. Dilettoso claimed to have used software called "Image Pro Plus" (exact version unknown) to determine the amount of red, green and blue in the various photographic and video images and construct histograms of the data, which were then compared to several photographs known to be of flares. Several sources have pointed out, however, that it is impossible to determine the spectral signature of a light source based solely on photographic or video imagery, as film and electronics inherently alter the spectral signature of a light source by shifting hue in the visible spectrum, and experts in spectroscopy have dismissed his claims as being scientifically invalid. Normal photographic equipment also eliminates light outside the visible spectrum (e.g., infrared
and ultraviolet
) that would be necessary for a complete spectral analysis. The maker of "Image Pro Plus", Media Cybernetic, has stated that its software is incapable of performing spectroscopic analysis.
Cognitech, an independent video laboratory, superimposed video imagery taken of the Phoenix Lights onto video imagery it shot during daytime from the same location. In the composite image, the lights are seen to extinguish at the moment they reach the Estrella mountain range
, which is visible in the daytime, but invisible in the footage shot at night. A broadcast by local Fox Broadcasting affiliate KSAZ-TV
claimed to have performed a similar test that showed the lights were in front of the mountain range and suggested that the Cognitech data might have been altered. Dr. Paul Scowen, visiting professor of Astronomy at Arizona State University
, performed a third analysis using daytime imagery overlaid with video shot of the lights and his findings were consistent with Cognitech. The Phoenix New Times
subsequently reported the television station had simply overlaid two video tracks on a video editing machine without using a computer to match the zoom and scale of the two images.
Proponents of two separate events propose that the first event still has no provable explanation, but that some evidence exists that the lights were in fact airplanes. According to an article by reporter Janet Gonzales that appeared in the Phoenix New Times
, videotape of the v shape shows the lights moving as separate entities, not as a single object; a phenomenon known as illusory contours
can cause the human eye to see unconnected lines or dots as forming a single shape.
Mitch Stanley, an amateur astronomer, observed the lights using a Dobsonian telescope
giving 43x magnification. After observing the lights, he told his mother, who was present at the time, that the lights were aircraft. According to Stanley, the lights were quite clearly individual airplanes; a companion who was with him recalled asking Stanley at the time what the lights were, and he said, "Planes". His account is contradicted by several thousand Phoenix residents without high powered telescopes, however, and no military or civilian aircraft formations were known to have been flying in the area at that time, which isn't unheard of.
The U.S. Air Force explained the second event as slow-falling, long-burning LUU-2B/B illumination flares
dropped by a flight of four A-10 Warthog aircraft on a training exercise at the Barry Goldwater Range at Luke Air Force Base
. According to this explanation, the flares would have been visible in Phoenix and appeared to hover due to rising heat from the burning flares creating a "balloon" effect on their parachutes, which slowed the descent. The lights then appeared to wink out as they fell behind the Sierra Estrella, a mountain range to the southwest of Phoenix.
A Maryland Air National Guard pilot, Lt. Col. Ed Jones, responding to a March 2007 media query, confirmed that he had flown one of the aircraft in the formation that dropped flares on the night in question. The squadron to which he belonged was in fact at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona on a training exercise at the time and flew training sorties to the Barry Goldwater Range on the night in question, according to the Maryland Air National Guard. A history of the Maryland Air National Guard published in 2000 asserted that the squadron, the 104th Fighter Squadron
, was responsible for the incident. The first reports that members of the Maryland Air National Guard were responsible for the incident were published in The Arizona Republic newspaper in July 1997.
Military flares such as these can be seen from hundreds of miles given ideal environmental conditions. Later comparisons with known military flare drops were reported on local television stations, showing similarities between the known military flare drops and the Phoenix Lights. An analysis of the luminosity of LUU-2B/B illumination flares, the type which would have been in use by A-10 aircraft at the time, determined that the luminosity of such flares at a range of approximately 50–70 miles would fall well within the range of the lights viewed from Phoenix.
Dr. Bruce Maccabee did an extensive triangulation of the four videotapes, determining that the objects were near or over the Goldwater Proving Grounds.
held a press conference, stating that "they found who was responsible". He proceeded to make light of the situation by bringing his aide on stage dressed in an alien costume. (Dateline, NBC).
But in March 2007, Symington said that he had witnessed one of the "crafts of unknown origin" during the 1997 event, although he did not go public with the information.
In an interview with The Daily Courier in Prescott, Arizona
, Symington said, "I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it". Symington had earlier said, "It was enormous and inexplicable. Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too. It was dramatic. And it couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical. It had a geometric outline, a constant shape.
Symington also noted that he requested information from the commander of Luke Air Force Base
, the general of the National Guard
, and the head of the Department of Public Safety
. But none of the officials he contacted had an answer for what had happened, and were also perplexed. Later, he responded to an Air Force explanation that the lights were flares
: "As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man made object I'd ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation". In an episode of the TV show UFO Hunters
called "The Arizona Lights", Symington said that he contacted the military asking what the lights were. The response was "no comment". He pointed out that he was the governor of Arizona at the time, not just some ordinary civilian.
Frances Barwood, the 1997 Phoenix city councilwoman who launched an investigation into the event, said that of the over 700 witnesses she interviewed, "The government never interviewed even one".
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
s of, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
and the Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
state of Sonora
Sonora
Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....
on March 13, 1997.
Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 MST, in a space of about 300 miles, from the Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
line, through Phoenix
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
, to the edge of Tucson
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
. There were two distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area. The United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog
A-10 Thunderbolt II
The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II is an American single-seat, twin-engine, straight-wing jet aircraft developed by Fairchild-Republic in the early 1970s. The A-10 was designed for a United States Air Force requirement to provide close air support for ground forces by attacking tanks,...
aircraft that were on training exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range
Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range
The Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range is a bombing range in the U.S. state of Arizona that runs along the Mexican border....
in southwest Arizona. Witnesses claim to have observed a huge carpenter's square-shaped UFO, containing lights or possibly light-emitting engines. Fife Symington, the governor at the time, was one witness to this incident; he later called the object "otherworldly."
The lights were reported to have reappeared in 2007 and 2008, but these events were quickly attributed to (respectively) military flares dropped by fighter aircraft at Luke Air Force Base and flares attached to helium balloons released by a civilian.
Initial reports
At about 18:55 PST (6:55 PM PST), (19:55 MST [7:55 PM MST]), a man reported seeing a V-shaped object above HendersonHenderson, Nevada
-Demographics:According to the 2000 census, there were 175,381 people, 66,331 households, and 47,095 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,200.8 people per square mile . There were 71,149 housing units at an average density of 892.8 per square mile...
, Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
. He said it was about the "size of a (Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
) 747
Boeing 747
The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial airliner and cargo transport, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide-body ever produced...
", sounded like "rushing wind", and had six lights on its leading edge. The lights reportedly traversed northwest to the southeast.
An unidentified former police officer from Paulden
Paulden, Arizona
Paulden is a census-designated place in Yavapai County, Arizona, United States. The population was 3,420 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Paulden is located at ....
, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
is claimed to have been the next person to report a sighting after leaving his house at about 20:15 MST (8:15 PM MST [7:15 PM PST]). As he was driving north, he allegedly saw a cluster of reddish or orange lights in the sky, comprising four lights together and a fifth light trailing them. Each of the individual lights in the formation appeared to the witness to consist of two separate point sources of orange light. He returned home and through binoculars watched the lights until they disappeared south over the horizon.
Prescott and Prescott Valley
Lights were also reportedly seen in the areas of PrescottPrescott, Arizona
Prescott is a city in Yavapai County, Arizona, USA. It was designated "Arizona's Christmas City" by Arizona Governor Rose Mofford in the late 1980s....
and Prescott Valley
Prescott Valley, Arizona
Prescott Valley is a town in Yavapai County, Arizona, United States, just east of Prescott. Prescott Valley was the seventh fastest-growing place among all cities and towns in Arizona between 1990 and 2000...
. At approximately 20:17 MST, callers began reporting the object was definitely solid because it blocked out much of the starry sky as it passed over.{http://www.phoenixlightsufo.com/ Tim Ley, eyewitness, in his own words.}
John Kaiser was standing outside with his wife and sons in Prescott Valley, when they noticed a cluster of lights to the west-northwest of their position. The lights formed a triangular pattern, but all of them appeared to be red, except the light at the nose of the object, which was distinctly white. The object, or objects, which had been observed for approximately 2–3 minutes with binoculars, then passed directly overhead the observers, they were seen to "bank to the right", and they then disappeared in the night sky to the southeast of Prescott Valley. The altitude could not be determined, however it was fairly low and made no sound whatsoever.
The National UFO Reporting Center
National UFO Reporting Center
The National UFO Reporting Center is an organization in the United States that investigates UFO sightings and/or alien contacts. NUFORC has been in continuous operation since 1974...
received the following report from the Prescott area:
Dewey
At the town of Dewey, 10 miles east of Prescott, ArizonaPrescott, Arizona
Prescott is a city in Yavapai County, Arizona, USA. It was designated "Arizona's Christmas City" by Arizona Governor Rose Mofford in the late 1980s....
, six people saw a large cluster of lights while driving northbound on Highway 69.
First sighting from Phoenix
Tim Ley and his wife Bobbi, his son Hal and his grandson Damien Turnidge first saw the lights when they were above Prescott ValleyPrescott Valley, Arizona
Prescott Valley is a town in Yavapai County, Arizona, United States, just east of Prescott. Prescott Valley was the seventh fastest-growing place among all cities and towns in Arizona between 1990 and 2000...
about 65 miles away from them. At first they appeared to them as five separate and distinct lights in an arc shape like they were on top of a balloon, but they soon realized the lights appeared to be moving towards them. Over the next ten or so minutes they appeared to be coming closer and the distance between the lights increased and they took on the shape of an upside down V. Eventually when the lights appeared to be a couple of miles away the witnesses could make out a shape that looked like a carpenter's square with the five lights set into it, with one at the front and two on each side. Soon the lights appeared to be coming right down the street where they lived about 100 to 150 feet above them, traveling so slowly it appeared to hover and was silent. The lights then seemed to pass over their heads and went through a V opening in the peaks of the mountain range towards Squaw Peak Mountain
Piestewa Peak
Piestewa Peak , at 2608 feet is the second highest point in the Phoenix Mountains, after Camelback Mountain, and the third highest in the city of Phoenix, Arizona. It is located in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. Piestewa Peak is named in honor of Army Spc...
and toward the direction of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is a joint civil-military public airport located southeast of the central business district of the city of Phoenix, in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States...
. Witnesses in Glendale, a suburb northwest of Phoenix, saw the object pass overhead at an altitude high enough to become obscured by the thin clouds; this was at approximately between 8:30 and 8:45 pm.
Arriving in Phoenix
When the triangular formation entered the Phoenix area, Bill Greiner, a cement driver hauling a load down a mountain north of Phoenix, described the second group of lights: "I'll never be the same. Before this, if anybody had told me they saw a UFO, I would've said, "Yeah and I believe in the Tooth Fairy." "Now I've got a whole new view and I may be just a dumb truck driver, but I've seen something that don't belong here." Greiner stated that the lights hovered over the area for in excess of 2 hours.After Phoenix
A report came from a young man in the KingmanKingman, Arizona
Kingman is located in a desert climate on the edge of the Mojave Desert, but its higher elevation and location between the Colorado Plateau and the Lower Colorado River Valley tempers summer high temperatures and contributes to winter cold and rare snowfall. Summer daytime highs reach above 90 °F ...
area who stopped his car at a payphone to report the incident. "[The] young man, en route to Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, called from a phone booth to report having seen a large and bizarre cluster of stars moving slowly in the northern sky".
Reappearance in 2007
A repeat of the lights occurred February 6, 2007, and was recorded by the local Fox News TV station. According to military officials and the FAA, these were flares dropped by F-16 aircraft training at Luke Air Force Base.Reappearance in 2008
On April 21, 2008, lights were again reported over Phoenix by local residents. These lights appeared to change from square to triangular formation over time. A valley resident reported that shortly after the lights appeared, three jets were seen heading west in the direction of the lights. An official from Luke Air Force Base denied any United States Air ForceUnited States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
activity in the area. On April 22, 2008, a resident of Phoenix told a newspaper that the lights were nothing more than his neighbor releasing helium balloons with flares attached. This was confirmed by a police helicopter. The following day a Phoenix resident who declined to be identified in news reports stated he had attached flares to helium balloons and released them from his back yard.
Photographic documentation
Imagery of the Phoenix Lights falls into two categories: images of the triangular formation seen prior to 10 pm in Prescott and Dewey, and images of the 10 pm Phoenix event. Almost all known images are of the second event. All known images were produced using a variety of commercially available camcorders and cameras. There are no known images taken by equipment designed for scientific analysis, nor are there any known images taken using high powered optics or night visionNight vision
Night vision is the ability to see in low light conditions. Whether by biological or technological means, night vision is made possible by a combination of two approaches: sufficient spectral range, and sufficient intensity range...
equipment.
First event
There are few known images of the Prescott/Dewey lights. Television station KSAZ reported that an individual named Richard Curtis took a detailed video that purportedly showed the outline of a space craft, but that the video had been lost. The only other known video is of poor quality and shows a group of lights with no craft visible.Second event
During the Phoenix event, numerous still photographs and videotapes were made, distinctly showing a series of lights appearing at a regular interval, remaining illuminated for several moments and then going out. These images have been repeatedly aired by documentary TV channels such as the Discovery ChannelDiscovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
and the History Channel as part of their UFO documentary programming.
The most frequently seen sequence shows what appears to be an arc of lights appearing one by one, then going out one by one. UFO advocates claim that these images show that the lights were some form of "running light" or other aircraft illumination along the leading edge of a large craft (estimated to be as large as a mile in diameter) hovering over the city of Phoenix. Other similar sequences reportedly taken over a half hour period show differing numbers of lights in a V or arrowhead array. Thousands of witnesses throughout Arizona also reported a silent, mile wide V or boomerang shaped craft with varying numbers of huge orbs. A significant number of witnesses reported that the craft was silently gliding directly overhead at low altitude. The first-hand witnesses consistently reported that the lights appeared as "canisters of swimming light", while the underbelly of the craft was undulating "like looking through water". However, skeptics claim that the video is evidence that mountains not visible at night partially obstructed views from certain angles, thereby bolstering the claim that the lights were more distant than UFO advocates claim.
UFO advocate Jim Dilettoso claimed to have performed "spectral analysis
Spectrum analysis
Spectrum, also known as emission spectrochemical analysis, is the original scientific method of charting and analyzing the chemical properties of matter and gases by looking at the bands in their optical spectrum...
" of photographs and video imagery that proved the lights could not have been produced by a man-made source. Dilettoso claimed to have used software called "Image Pro Plus" (exact version unknown) to determine the amount of red, green and blue in the various photographic and video images and construct histograms of the data, which were then compared to several photographs known to be of flares. Several sources have pointed out, however, that it is impossible to determine the spectral signature of a light source based solely on photographic or video imagery, as film and electronics inherently alter the spectral signature of a light source by shifting hue in the visible spectrum, and experts in spectroscopy have dismissed his claims as being scientifically invalid. Normal photographic equipment also eliminates light outside the visible spectrum (e.g., infrared
Infrared
Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
and ultraviolet
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...
) that would be necessary for a complete spectral analysis. The maker of "Image Pro Plus", Media Cybernetic, has stated that its software is incapable of performing spectroscopic analysis.
Cognitech, an independent video laboratory, superimposed video imagery taken of the Phoenix Lights onto video imagery it shot during daytime from the same location. In the composite image, the lights are seen to extinguish at the moment they reach the Estrella mountain range
Sierra Estrella
The Sierra Estrella is a mountain range located southwest of Phoenix, Arizona. Much of the range falls within the Gila River Indian Reservation, but of BLM land is protected as the Sierra Estrella Wilderness.-Description:...
, which is visible in the daytime, but invisible in the footage shot at night. A broadcast by local Fox Broadcasting affiliate KSAZ-TV
KSAZ-TV
KSAZ-TV, virtual channel 10.1, is the Fox owned-and-operated station in Phoenix, Arizona. It is owned by Fox Television Stations in a duopoly with MyNetworkTV station KUTP ....
claimed to have performed a similar test that showed the lights were in front of the mountain range and suggested that the Cognitech data might have been altered. Dr. Paul Scowen, visiting professor of Astronomy at Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
, performed a third analysis using daytime imagery overlaid with video shot of the lights and his findings were consistent with Cognitech. The Phoenix New Times
Phoenix New Times
The Phoenix New Times is a free, weekly Phoenix, Arizona newspaper, put out every Thursday. It is the founding publication of the New Times Media , but The Village Voice is now the flagship publication of that company....
subsequently reported the television station had simply overlaid two video tracks on a video editing machine without using a computer to match the zoom and scale of the two images.
Explanations
There is some controversy as to how best to classify the reports on the night in question. Some are of the opinion that the differing nature of the eyewitness reports indicates that several unidentified objects were in the area, each of which was its own separate "event". This is largely dismissed by skeptics as an over-extrapolation from the kind of deviation common in necessarily subjective eyewitness accounts. The media and most skeptical investigators have largely preferred to split the sightings into two distinct classes, a first and second event, for which two separate explanations are offered:First event
The first event—the "V", which appeared over northern Arizona and gradually traveled south over nearly the entire length of the state, eventually passing south of Tucson—was the apparently "wedge-shaped" object reported by then-Governor Symington and many others. This event started at about 8:15 over the Prescott area, and was seen south of Tucson by about 8:45.Proponents of two separate events propose that the first event still has no provable explanation, but that some evidence exists that the lights were in fact airplanes. According to an article by reporter Janet Gonzales that appeared in the Phoenix New Times
Phoenix New Times
The Phoenix New Times is a free, weekly Phoenix, Arizona newspaper, put out every Thursday. It is the founding publication of the New Times Media , but The Village Voice is now the flagship publication of that company....
, videotape of the v shape shows the lights moving as separate entities, not as a single object; a phenomenon known as illusory contours
Illusory contours
Illusory contours or subjective contours are a form of visual illusion where contours are perceived without a luminance or color change across the contour. Friedrich Schumann discovered illusory contours.-Examples:...
can cause the human eye to see unconnected lines or dots as forming a single shape.
Mitch Stanley, an amateur astronomer, observed the lights using a Dobsonian telescope
Dobsonian telescope
A Dobsonian telescope is an alt-azimuth mounted newtonian telescope design popularized by the amateur astronomer John Dobson starting in the 1960s. Dobson's telescopes featured a simplified mechanical design that was easy to manufacture from readily available components to create a large, portable,...
giving 43x magnification. After observing the lights, he told his mother, who was present at the time, that the lights were aircraft. According to Stanley, the lights were quite clearly individual airplanes; a companion who was with him recalled asking Stanley at the time what the lights were, and he said, "Planes". His account is contradicted by several thousand Phoenix residents without high powered telescopes, however, and no military or civilian aircraft formations were known to have been flying in the area at that time, which isn't unheard of.
Second event
The second event was the set of nine lights appearing to "hover" over the city of Phoenix at around 10 pm. The second event has been more thoroughly covered by the media, due in part to the numerous video images taken of the lights. This was also observed by numerous people who may have thought they were seeing the same lights as those reported earlier.The U.S. Air Force explained the second event as slow-falling, long-burning LUU-2B/B illumination flares
Flare (pyrotechnic)
A flare, also sometimes called a fusee, is a type of pyrotechnic that produces a brilliant light or intense heat without an explosion. Flares are used for signalling, illumination, or defensive countermeasures in civilian and military applications...
dropped by a flight of four A-10 Warthog aircraft on a training exercise at the Barry Goldwater Range at Luke Air Force Base
Luke Air Force Base
Luke Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located seven miles west of the central business district of Glendale, in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is also about west of Phoenix, Arizona....
. According to this explanation, the flares would have been visible in Phoenix and appeared to hover due to rising heat from the burning flares creating a "balloon" effect on their parachutes, which slowed the descent. The lights then appeared to wink out as they fell behind the Sierra Estrella, a mountain range to the southwest of Phoenix.
A Maryland Air National Guard pilot, Lt. Col. Ed Jones, responding to a March 2007 media query, confirmed that he had flown one of the aircraft in the formation that dropped flares on the night in question. The squadron to which he belonged was in fact at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona on a training exercise at the time and flew training sorties to the Barry Goldwater Range on the night in question, according to the Maryland Air National Guard. A history of the Maryland Air National Guard published in 2000 asserted that the squadron, the 104th Fighter Squadron
104th Fighter Squadron
The 104th Fighter Squadron is an attack squadron equipped with the A-10 Thunderbolt II. It is a unit of the Maryland Air National Guard. Its parent unit is the 175th Wing.-Mission:...
, was responsible for the incident. The first reports that members of the Maryland Air National Guard were responsible for the incident were published in The Arizona Republic newspaper in July 1997.
Military flares such as these can be seen from hundreds of miles given ideal environmental conditions. Later comparisons with known military flare drops were reported on local television stations, showing similarities between the known military flare drops and the Phoenix Lights. An analysis of the luminosity of LUU-2B/B illumination flares, the type which would have been in use by A-10 aircraft at the time, determined that the luminosity of such flares at a range of approximately 50–70 miles would fall well within the range of the lights viewed from Phoenix.
Dr. Bruce Maccabee did an extensive triangulation of the four videotapes, determining that the objects were near or over the Goldwater Proving Grounds.
News media
There was minimal news coverage at the time of the incident. In Phoenix, a small number of local news outlets noted the event, but it received little attention beyond that. But on June 18, 1997, USA Today ran a front-page story that brought national attention to the case. This was followed by news coverage on the ABC and NBC television networks. The case quickly caught the popular imagination and has since become a staple of UFO-related documentary television, including specials produced by the History Channel and the Discovery Channel.Governor
Shortly after the lights, Arizona Governor Fife Symington IIIFife Symington III
John Fife Symington III is an American businessman and the former Governor of the U.S. state of Arizona from 1991 until his resignation in 1997.-Background:...
held a press conference, stating that "they found who was responsible". He proceeded to make light of the situation by bringing his aide on stage dressed in an alien costume. (Dateline, NBC).
But in March 2007, Symington said that he had witnessed one of the "crafts of unknown origin" during the 1997 event, although he did not go public with the information.
In an interview with The Daily Courier in Prescott, Arizona
Prescott, Arizona
Prescott is a city in Yavapai County, Arizona, USA. It was designated "Arizona's Christmas City" by Arizona Governor Rose Mofford in the late 1980s....
, Symington said, "I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I've ever seen. It remains a great mystery. Other people saw it, responsible people. I don't know why people would ridicule it". Symington had earlier said, "It was enormous and inexplicable. Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too. It was dramatic. And it couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical. It had a geometric outline, a constant shape.
Symington also noted that he requested information from the commander of Luke Air Force Base
Luke Air Force Base
Luke Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located seven miles west of the central business district of Glendale, in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. It is also about west of Phoenix, Arizona....
, the general of the National Guard
United States National Guard
The National Guard of the United States is a reserve military force composed of state National Guard militia members or units under federally recognized active or inactive armed force service for the United States. Militia members are citizen soldiers, meaning they work part time for the National...
, and the head of the Department of Public Safety
Department of Public Safety
The Department of Public Safety , also called an Office of Public Safety, is a state or local government umbrella agency in the United States which serves to assist the certain agencies in their services by providing administrative, financial, and technical services and support for core public...
. But none of the officials he contacted had an answer for what had happened, and were also perplexed. Later, he responded to an Air Force explanation that the lights were flares
Flare (pyrotechnic)
A flare, also sometimes called a fusee, is a type of pyrotechnic that produces a brilliant light or intense heat without an explosion. Flares are used for signalling, illumination, or defensive countermeasures in civilian and military applications...
: "As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man made object I'd ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation". In an episode of the TV show UFO Hunters
UFO Hunters
UFO Hunters is an American television series that premiered on January 30, 2008 on The History Channel, produced by Motion Picture Production Inc., and ran for three seasons....
called "The Arizona Lights", Symington said that he contacted the military asking what the lights were. The response was "no comment". He pointed out that he was the governor of Arizona at the time, not just some ordinary civilian.
Frances Barwood, the 1997 Phoenix city councilwoman who launched an investigation into the event, said that of the over 700 witnesses she interviewed, "The government never interviewed even one".
Related films
- The Phoenix Lights...We Are Not Alone Documentary, Lynne D. Kitei, M.D., Executive Producer, in collaboration with Steve Lantz Productions. Based on the book, The Phoenix Lights...A Skeptic's Discovery That We Are Not Alone and featuring Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, former Governor Fife Symington, former Vice Mayor, investigators, military, pilots and witnesses.
- The Appearance of a Man, directed by Daniel Pace.
- Night SkiesNight Skies (film)Night Skies is a 2007 horror film starring A.J. Cook, Jason Connery, George Stults and Ashley Peldon. It revolves around the infamous "Phoenix Lights", one of the largest UFO sightings ever.- Plot :...
, a horrorHorror fictionHorror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
movie starring Jason ConneryJason ConneryJason Joseph Connery is an English actor.-Early life:Connery grew up in London. He attended Millfield School, a co-educational independent school in Somerset, England, and later at the independent Gordonstoun School in Scotland. He was later accepted into the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School...
, A.J. CookA. J. Cook (actress)Andrea Joy "A.J." Cook-Andersen is a Canadian actress best known for her role as Supervisory Special Agent Jennifer "JJ" Jareau in the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds...
, and Ashley PeldonAshley PeldonAshley Peldon is an American television and film actress.-Early life and career:Peldon was born in New York City, New York. Along with her sister Courtney, she worked as a child actor....
, features the lights. It premiered direct-to-DVD in the US on January 23, 2007. - They Came from Outer Space (previous title: Phoenix Lights The Movie), a science fictionScience fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
thriller starring Ossie BeckOssie BeckOssie Beck is an American actor. He played Eliezer Halfin in 2005's Munich.Beck was born in Hollywood, California. He later attended college in Santa Barbara, California as a pre-med major.-External links:*...
, Mackenzie FirgensMackenzie Firgens-Early life:Firgens was born in Burbank, California, close to Hollywood, and was raised by her musician/actor father and singer/artist mother. She has said that she knew she wanted to be an actor from a young age, and would put on plays for her parents and friends, often playing several roles. She...
, Yvette RachelleYvette RachelleYvette Rachelle is an actress and model.- Early life :Rachelle was raised in California, Hawaii and Europe. Her mother is from Sweden.- Modeling :...
, Matt Mercer, Terin Alba, Courtney Gains, Mark Arnold, Michael LeMelle, Aaron Mills, and Luke Amsden.
See also
- Black projectBlack projectIn the United States and United Kingdom, a black project is in the vernacular a classified military/defense project, unacknowledged publicly by the government, military personnel, and defense contractors. Examples of U.S...
- Black triangle (UFO)
- Hessdalen Lights
- Marfa LightsMarfa lightsThe Marfa lights, also known as the Marfa ghost lights, have been observed near U.S. Route 67 on Mitchell Flat east of Marfa, Texas, in the United States...
- Tinley Park LightsTinley Park LightsThe Tinley Park Lights is a reference to a series of five mass UFO sightings which occurred on August 21, 2004, two months later on October 31, 2004, again on October 1 of 2005, and again on October 31, 2006, in Tinley Park and Oak Park, Illinois, suburbs of Chicago...
- List of UFO sightings
External links
- http://www.thephoenixlights.net
- Dickerson, John. "Unidentified", Times Publications, November 2006