The Phoenix Lights, 1997: two events, one night

The Phoenix Lights are often described as the most widely witnessed UFO event in American history. What gets lost in that description is that the evening of March 13, 1997, produced two separate sightings, at different times, in different parts of the sky. Most arguments about the case come from treating them as one.

The two events side by side

	Event one	Event two
Time	Early evening, from about 8 p.m. local time	Around 10 p.m. local time
Where seen	Moving from northern Arizona south through Phoenix toward Tucson	Stationary low over the mountains southwest of Phoenix
What people described	A V or boomerang shape of lights, moving slowly and silently	A line of bright amber orbs that appeared, hung, and faded one by one
How it was recorded	Mostly eyewitness accounts; some reports of a solid dark shape between the lights	Widely photographed and recorded on camcorders from across the city
Official explanation	None published in full	Illumination flares from military aircraft on a training exercise

Event one: the V-shaped formation

Witnesses from the north of the state down through the Phoenix area described a set of lights in a V formation moving slowly overhead. Some described the lights as fixed points on a single enormous object, dark enough to block out stars as it passed. Others described separate lights that kept a formation.

That disagreement is the heart of event one. If the lights were separate, a formation of aircraft becomes a strong candidate. An amateur astronomer in Phoenix, Mitch Stanley, later said that through his telescope he saw what appeared to be individual planes flying in formation. If the lights were fixed to one object, that explanation does not work.

There is no published government investigation of this part of the evening. The witness accounts are many and sincere, and they do not all agree with one another.

Event two: the lights over the mountains

The later sighting is the one most people have seen pictures of: a row of glowing lights low over the horizon, appearing and disappearing in sequence. This is also the event with an official explanation.

The military said that A-10 aircraft from the Maryland Air National Guard, taking part in a training exercise called Operation Snowbird, dropped high-intensity illumination flares over the Barry M. Goldwater Range, southwest of Phoenix, that night. Flares of this kind descend slowly under parachutes and burn brightly for several minutes.

Two details support the flare explanation for event two:

• From Phoenix, the flares would sit behind the mountains, so they would seem to wink out as they dropped below the ridgeline rather than fading in the open sky.
• Analysts who compared recordings from different locations matched the position of the lights to the direction of the range.

The governor's part in the story

In June 1997, Arizona Governor Fife Symington held a press conference about the lights and brought out an aide dressed in an alien costume, intended to calm the public mood with a joke. Years later, he said publicly that he had seen the lights himself that night and did not believe they were flares. His account is part of the record now, and it is often cited as a reason the case remains unsettled.

Why we mark this file "Open"

Event two has an official explanation that fits the evidence well. Event one does not have an official explanation at all. A case with one half explained and one half not is not closed, so we mark the file Open.

What the case teaches about any sighting

The Phoenix Lights are a lesson in the value of the clock. If witnesses had recorded the exact time of what they saw, sorting the two events would have been much simpler. Many reports simply said "that night."

When you see something:

1. Record the time to the minute.
2. Note whether lights move together or independently.
3. Note anything behind them: mountains, ridgelines, buildings. Lights that vanish at a horizon are often going behind it.
4. Listen. Aircraft at altitude can be silent from the ground, but wind direction affects that too.

What remains unexplained

The V-shaped formation. Whether it was one object or several, and what it was, has never been settled by any published investigation. Witness accounts from thousands of people across hundreds of miles say something crossed Arizona early that evening. The record has not said what.