DRTY wrote:isn't 'phoenix lights' supposedly the most well documented 'alien UFO' sighting ever recorded? It's odd how with all those hours of footage recorded, and photographs taken there was still no actual sight of a vehicle of any sort.
i was thinking the same thing... this thing was covered twice (97 & 07) and documented by media, regular people, astronomers, police, etc... what's the deal? no explanation from the gov?
edit: Wiki Says:
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 standard 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:
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.
The second event was the set of nine lights falling behind the Sierra Estrella, a mountain ridge to the southwest of Phoenix, at around 10 pm. This was also observed by numerous people who may have thought they were seeing the same lights as those reported earlier.
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. Ortega also spoke with amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley, who was outside that night using a Dobsonian telescope, which yielded a view 60 times the magnification of the human eye. 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".[18] However, no pilots have yet been found who admit to flying such a formation that night, and many witnesses continue to insist that they actually saw the entire object blocking the stars.
The second event has been more thoroughly covered by the media, due in part to the military's backing of the explanation. The USAF explained the second event as slow falling, long burning flares dropped by an A-10 Warthog aircraft on a training exercise over Luke Air Force Base. An investigation by Luke AFB itself also came to this conclusion and declared the case "solved".[citation needed]
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.[citation needed] The squadron to which he belonged was in fact in Arizona on a training exercise at the time, according to the Maryland Air National Guard. A history of the Maryland Air National Guard published in 2000 previously asserted that the squadron, the 104th Fighter Squadron, was responsible for the incident.[20] 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.[21]
Military flares[22][23] 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.[19]
but of course, citations are needed
