The Phoenix Lights
Partially explainedSummary
On one night in March 1997, thousands of people in Arizona saw lights in the sky. It is the best-witnessed sighting event in American history and the most-cited, and almost every account of it makes the same mistake at the very first step.
There were two events. They happened two hours apart, in different places, and they have different explanations.
The one everybody has seen on video is flares, and that has been established since 1997.
The other one is not settled.
What is documented
Event one, roughly 8:00 to 8:30 pm. A formation of lights, arranged in a V or a shallow triangle, moved south across Arizona, from the direction of Nevada, over Phoenix, and on toward Tucson.
It was seen by very large numbers of people across a long track. Many described it not as a formation of lights but as a single enormous object, silent, and occluding the stars behind it.
Event two, roughly 10:00 pm. A line of stationary lights appeared in the sky southwest of Phoenix. They hung there. Then, over some minutes, they descended and went out, one after another, along the horizon.
This is the event that was filmed. The famous footage, the one that has been on television for thirty years, is event two.
The flares. The Maryland Air National Guard was flying A-10 aircraft on a night training exercise at the Barry M. Goldwater Range, southwest of Phoenix. The exercise involved dropping high-intensity illumination flares, which descend slowly under parachutes.
The Air National Guard confirmed this in 1997.
Why they behaved as they did. The flares hung in the air, drifting slowly down. Between the observers in Phoenix and the range lie the Estrella Mountains. As each flare descended, it passed behind the ridgeline and vanished from view.
That is why they appear to be stationary, and that is why they wink out one after another in a line rather than dropping to the ground: the mountain range was cutting them off. The positions at which the lights disappear correspond to the ridgeline.
The flare explanation has been examined repeatedly, including by replicating the drop and filming it, and it matches.
Mitch Stanley. During event one, an amateur astronomer named Mitch Stanley was observing with a Dobsonian telescope. He turned it on the V-formation.
He reported seeing distinct, separate aircraft, each with lights, flying in formation. He said so at the time and has said so since.
This is the single strongest piece of evidence about event one, because it is the only observation made through an instrument capable of resolving the objects.
Fife Symington. The Governor of Arizona at the time. In 1997 he held a press conference at which an aide was brought out in an alien costume, which he later said had been an attempt to defuse public alarm.
In 2007 he stated publicly that he had seen the object himself, and described it as an enormous delta-shaped craft, and said he did not believe it was man-made.
The registry records his testimony as testimony. He was a governor and a former Air Force pilot, and his account is worth taking seriously, and it is still one man's account of lights in a night sky.
Leading explanations
Event two: flares. Established. Confirmed by the unit that dropped them, consistent with the geography, and reproduced experimentally. This is not contested by anybody who has examined it, and it accounts for the footage.
Event one: a formation of aircraft. Leading, not settled.
A line of aircraft flying in formation, seen at night from below, presents a set of lights moving together. The human visual system is very poor at judging distance and size in a dark sky with no reference, and it will readily assemble a set of co-moving lights into a single object.
Mitch Stanley's telescopic observation supports this directly, and it is the only resolved observation that exists.
What the aircraft hypothesis has to answer. A great many witnesses report that the object was silent, and that it blocked out the stars behind it, which would make it a solid body rather than a set of separate lights.
Neither claim is easy to assess. Sound at altitude is unreliable and is affected by wind and atmospheric layering. Star occlusion, at night, by eye, without a reference, is a very hard judgement, and observers who believe they are looking at a solid object will report that it occludes stars.
The registry records these as unresolved rather than dismissing them.
What the popular version gets wrong
"The Phoenix Lights were one event." They were two, two hours apart, in different parts of the sky. Nearly every retelling merges them, and once merged, the confirmed explanation of the second is used to dismiss the first, or the unresolved nature of the first is used to reject the confirmed explanation of the second. Both moves are wrong and both are common.
"The video shows the craft." The video shows the flares. What most people believe they are watching when they watch the Phoenix Lights footage is a thing that has been explained for nearly thirty years.
"The military never explained it." The Maryland Air National Guard said they had dropped the flares, in 1997, and named the exercise and the range.
"An astronomer looked at it with a telescope and could not identify it." An astronomer looked at it with a telescope and identified it as aircraft. This is the single most under-reported fact in the entire case.
"The Governor's testimony proves it." The Governor's testimony is testimony, and it is a decade old at the point he gave it, and it is the recollection of a man looking up at a dark sky without an instrument. His reversal is honest and it is interesting, and it is not evidence of a craft.
Current status
Partially explained. Event two is settled and has been from the start. Event one is not, and the leading explanation is a formation of aircraft, supported by the only telescopic observation on record and unsupported by anything that could resolve the object independently.
The registry keeps this record because of the compound error at its heart. The case is famous because of a video, and the video is of the event that was explained immediately, and it is used as proof of the event that was not.
Sources
- Maryland Air National Guard, confirmation of the A-10 flare exercise at the Barry M. Goldwater Range, 13 March 1997.
- Stanley, M. Telescopic observation of the V-formation, 13 March 1997, and subsequent statements.
- Analyses of the flare footage against the ridgeline of the Estrella Mountains, and experimental replication of the drop.
- Symington, F. Public statements, 1997 and 2007.
- Sheaffer, R. and Printy, T. Published analyses of both events.
Last reviewed: July 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.