Phoenix Lights
The second group of lights were identified by Robert Sheaffer as illumination flares dropped by another flight of A-10 aircraft that were on training exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range in southwest Arizona.
At 8:15 pm, an unidentified former police officer in Paulden, Arizona, reported seeing a cluster of reddish-orange lights disappear over the southern horizon.
[9] Between 8:30 and 8:45 pm, witnesses in Glendale, a suburb northwest of Phoenix, saw the light formation pass overhead at an altitude high enough to become obscured by the thin clouds.
[8] At approximately 10:00 pm that same evening, a large number of people in the Phoenix area reported seeing "a row of brilliant lights hovering in the sky, or slowly falling".
"[5] Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha said he also investigated the two separate sightings and traced them both to A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft flying in formation at high altitude.
[12] A Maryland ANG 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.
[15] During the Phoenix event, numerous still photographs and videotapes were made showing a series of lights appearing at a regular interval, remaining illuminated for several moments, and then going out.
The images were later determined to be the result of mountains not visible by night that partially obstructed the view of aircraft flares from certain angles to create the illusion of an arc of lights appearing and disappearing one by one.
[16][15] Shortly after the 1997 incident, Arizona Governor Fife Symington III held a press conference, joking that "they found who was responsible" and revealing an aide dressed in an alien costume.
Later, in 2007, Symington reportedly told a UFO investigator he'd had a personal close encounter with an alien spacecraft but remained silent "because he didn't want to panic the populace".
[22] The following day, a Phoenix resident, who declined to be identified in news reports, stated that he had attached flares to helium balloons and released them from his back yard.
