Phoenix Lights
Phoenix Lights is the collective name for the light phenomena seen by many people in and around Arizona on March 13, 1997, one of the most frequently cited cases in American UFO history.
Phoenix Lights is the name given to the series of light phenomena observed on the evening of March 13, 1997, over the state of Arizona, mainly over the Phoenix area. Several thousand people reported it, and the sightings came not only from Arizona but also from Nevada and northern Mexico. The case is one of the best-known American UFO cases.
What the witnesses claim
The reports describe two separate phenomena. Around 8 p.m., many people saw lights arranged in a V shape or a huge, silently moving, boomerang-shaped object that passed across the state from north to south. Around 10 p.m., a row of motionless, hovering lights was observed over Phoenix. Some of the witnesses spoke of a craft of unknown origin; the second phenomenon was recorded on video.
Official and skeptical positions
According to the official explanation, the late-evening lights were caused by parachute flares dropped during an exercise over the Barry M. Goldwater Range by A-10 aircraft of the Maryland Air National Guard. The aircraft were in Arizona as part of a winter training program called Operation Snowbird. Most researchers accept this explanation for the later lights, but it does not apply to the earlier V formation. According to skeptics, the V formation was made up of airplanes flying in formation, whose lights in the dark gave the impression of a single huge object. An amateur astronomer watching through a telescope identified individual airplanes at the time. Some ufologists dispute this and speak of an object of unknown origin.
The case also touched local politics: Fife Symington, then governor of Arizona, at first mocked it, then ten years later claimed that he himself had seen a huge, unknown object at the time of the evening V formation.