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Mike Renzulli
More About: U F O and Other Unidentified StuffThe Phoenix Lights were Flares
Next March 13th will be the 14th Anniversary of the infamous Phoenix Lights.
The event occurred on March 13th, 1997 in which colored, unidentified flying orb-like objects that allegedly hovered over the Valley of the Sun.
Unfortunately, to this day, the local media stations still pitch this as an unexplained phenomenon. However, the facts about this speak for themselves. The Phoenix Lights were not unexplained and are not unexplainable at all.
The moment that each light disappeared on the videotapes and photographs used to document the event shows that the lights meet the horizon line of the Sierra Estrella mountains, proving that the objects were not over Phoenix but, in fact, were behind the mountains.
In reality, the orb-like colored objects seen that night were nothing more than extra military flares jettisoned by a group of A-10 ground attack planes on maneuvers at the Barry Goldwater firing range from Luke Air Force Base that evening. A young man saw the planes through his telescope the night this event occured and a couple who were flying a plane near the site where this took place came forward and asserted the lights seen that evening were flares.
In March 2007 Lt. Col. Ed Jones, confirmed that he had flown one of the aircraft in the formation that dropped flares on the night in question. The squadron he belonged to was the Maryland Air National Guard who used A-10 ground assault aircraft and were in Arizona on a training exercise at the time.
The first reports that members of the Maryland Air National Guard were responsible for the incident were reported by Arizona Republic reporter Richard Ruelas on July 25, 1997.
In an excellent, well-researched post on one website, Brian Dunning examined the flares used in the incident and how they correlate with what was seen that night. Dunning states:
The A-10 drops two different kinds of flare: a countermeasure flare, used to confuse heat-seeking missiles; and an illumination flare, used to light up the ground at night either for the benefit of troops on the ground or to light up a target so it can be visually targeted for weapons release. The illumination flare is the one we're talking about. It's called the LUU-2 air-deployed high intensity illumination flare. It's made by defense contractor ATK Thiokol. The variant in use at the time of the Phoenix Lights incident was the LUU-2B/B. It weights 30 pounds and its canister is three feet long and 5 inches in diameter. Once it ejects its parachute and ignites, it puts out 1.8 million candela for 4 minutes, or 1.6 million candela for 5 minutes. It falls in its parachute at 8.3 feet per second. At 1000 feet above the ground, it lights up an area half a kilometer wide at 5 lux. The LUU-2's pyrotechnic candle burns magnesium, which produces an intense white light. Because it burns so hot, it also ends up burning the aluminum canister, which adds an orange hue to the light for most of the burn. About halfway through the burn, enough of the canister has been burned away that it actually lightens the load and it falls more and more slowly. Once it's almost completely out, an explosive bolt disconnects the parachute and the flare drops, burning out completely sometime hopefully before landing on someone's wood shingle roof.
The Barry M. Goldwater Range is a big place — over 4,000 square miles — and the Phoenix metropolitan area is even larger, about 14,000 square miles. The distance between the two is usually cited at 60 to 80 miles, but as we can see, that's going to depend on a lot. We do know a little about where the A-10's were flying inside the Goldwater Range. The guy who was in the lead A-10, Lt. Col. Ed Jones, says they were near Gila Bend when they ejected the leftover flares, and Gila Bend is just about exactly 50 miles from downtown Phoenix. Mesa and Scottsdale are farther away, so let's take a super rough stab at it, be conservative, and say that the average observer of the Phoenix Lights was 70 miles away from the A-10's. The brightness of the LUU-2 seen from 70 miles away is roughly equal to a star with an apparent magnitude of somewhere between -3.2 and -4.3, which is significantly brighter than any stars visible in the sky, but not as bright as the full moon. The magnitude scale was developed by the astronomer Hipparchus, where +1 represents the brightest star in the sky, and +6 represents the faintest. -3.2 is quite a bit brighter than the brightest star. The noonday sun has an apparent magnitude of -26.7. Thanks to the guys on the Bad Astronomy and JREF forums who helped me with these calculations.
Yet another wrench in the machinery is that all of the above is dramatically affected by atmospheric conditions. It wouldn't take much haze for absorption and scatter to obscure flares completely at that distance, and in the clear conditions predominant over Phoenix, lights are often distorted by an inversion layer, an effect that you can sometimes see when the landing lights of aircraft approaching an airport appear much bigger than they actually are. So we have a computation based on multiple unknown variables, any of which could wildly throw off our results. The one thing we can say with certainty is that the approximate brightness of the Phoenix Lights as seen in the photographs and videos does fall well within the wide range of brightness that's possible from LUU-2B/B flares at 70 miles.
The U.F.O. and conspiracy crowd have milked this incident for all it's worth. One con artist ... er ... author has written a book about the incident and a documetary film about the Phoenix Lights was made too. Recently a U.F.O. convention took place in Phoenix in which the Phoenix Lights incident was one of the events highlighted for the event.
In an obvious act of desperation for publicity, during April of 2007 former Arizona Governor Fife Symington recanted his earlier denial that the Phoenix Lights were U.F.O.'s. He changed his original story stating he believed the Phoenix Lights were U.F.O.'s from the start.
Fortunately, one recent interview puts to bed the notion of alien life forms visiting Earth.
During April of last year, The Seattle Times published a story detailing the experiences of James Noce who is a former U.S. Air Force employee and worked at the location known as Area 51 for over fourty years. Noce points out that, while classified projects still go on at the base, the stories about unidentified objects and alien spacecraft housed at the military facility were tolerated by the military and C.I.A. since they helped take away attention from the top secret experiments conducted.
He and other former employees of the Area 51 base saw plenty of secret activities but none of them claimed to have seen anything related to aliens or anything U.F.O.-related.
On the one hand U.F.O. believers claim advanced life forms galavanting around the galaxy exist and insist that we are not alone. But when faced with questions as to why aliens with superior knowledge and technology would resort to indirect contact with humans and only select certain people to make contact with or experiment on including specific, factual reports and evidence that contradict their assertions, they state we may never know why said aliens conduct themselves the way they do.
Claims by U.F.O. proponents are similar to how people argue for the existence of God. Believers state their deity exists but when confronted with specifics questions as to why he/she/it resorts to indirect means to make contact, religionists fall back into agnosticism claiming we can never know God's ways.
In an attempt to prove their assertions, proponents of U.F.O.s (in this case the Phoenix Lights) only have unprovable theories while some, such as Lynne D. Kitei, author books or make movies in an attempt to make money off of the curiosity and hopes of others.
As far as the Phoenix Lights are concerned, the facts clearly document that they were flares and nothing more. Other claims of visits by alien life forms are also debunked too. Not only due to questionable claims by some of seeing unidentified spacecraft and abductions but also the result of people, like James Noce, going public.
This is not to say that there isn't intelligent life on other planets. However, the fact that there has not been a major event in the vain of The Day the Earth Stood Still should be indication enough that alien life forms traveling through space utilizing space craft and other forms of advanced technology selectively choosing individuals for experimentation and contact is nothing more than mythology.
7 Comments in Response to The Phoenix Lights were Flares
obviously, most of you don't read the comments. I clearly stated that was DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH the Phoenix lights, so was everyone else at the truckstop that night, not to mention the people that live in Gila Bend, and we all saw the same thing....FLARES! you're not gonna see smoke from 50 miles away, like the people who saw them in Phoenix, AND that's why their are in a sequential descending line, just like paratroopers dropped from an airplane. also, the military already stated that these flares were a NEW TYPE OF SLOW DESCENDING flare. See, I was there, I'm telling you a fact, (because I was directly underneath them), and there are STILL people that want to say they were "not flares".
Yeah ... just a flare. Like the thinking of the author about what he thought he saw with the Phoenix Lights among which was atheism, which was only a flux.
Are you serious? Have you ever seen flares falling to the ground? The lights in the video and pictures look nothing like a flare, which puts off smoke and illuminates that smoke as it falls. Flares are also subject to being blown around by the wind which would ruin the formation of the triangular shape. Thousands of people reported an incredibly similar description of what happened and you cite a handful, if that much, of testimony to the contrary. You're also citing two alternative and contradictory explanations, not to mention the fact that one of those happens to "explain" a sighting that took place over a decade after the original "Phoenix Lights" video. Your article is the worst explanation or "debunking" that I have ever read. You should really take more time to think about something before you post it on the internet, because now you have ruined any chance of gaining respect or credibility from readers.
The author shouldn't bake his cake in public and eat it too.
I like the PROVING part of the Phoenix Lights as flares and not U.F.O. But when the author inserts his Atheism on some people who saw the lights and BELIEVED their own findings that they weren’t flares but could be alien beings from outer space, that’s when this atheist author went kaput.
You see, only less than 1 percent or so of the people of the world including this objectivist or atheist author believed that there is no God or an Ultimate Supernatural Being or Supreme Creator of all things does not exist. On the shoulder of this Godless author lies the onus of proving that God doesn’t exist, just as he had successfully proven that the Phoenix Lights were not U.F.O. I wait with abated breath that he succeeds in this intellectual adventure.
And I shall sit at the edge of my chair till hell freezes over waiting for this author to prove that he was his mother’s son because he knew nothing about being his mother’s son before he was born. He just believed that he was, after being told that he was his mother’s son. His belief that he was his mother’s son, is the same belief of millions and millions of believers that God exists. What he should do is prove to me that he has his mother’s DNA, just I and other believers like me had proven that God’s DNA is in our soul. These parallel scientific proofs exist in different levels … one is in the spirit of man, the other on matter.
Also you are leaving out the fact that these lights were in form.Sorry dude flares do not stay in a pattern.One may burn out faster or will flare a little less.Also,why not tell the public asap about the flares so no problems arise.Just ignore everyone, then release a bogus explanation later.Stop treating 1000s of people like they are stupid and do not know what they saw.Were you there?Where's your footage of the incident?Making a joke of what people saw is typical.Another thing before you make claims realize that some people work and manufacture different types of flares.:)
I can guarantee that they were flares. On the night that this happened, I was traveling to Las Vegas from Tucson. I took the I-8/Gila Bend route so as to bypass Phoenix. Why? Because Phoenix always has horrendous traffic. Well, I was just about nearing the point where you turn off I-8, onto the Gila Bend bypass, when I saw this series of lights overhead to my left. So I pulled over, grabbed my binocs, and looked directly at them. Right away I could tell that they were flares, because I could see the stream of smoke trailing from each one. They were dropping slowly, so I assumed they must of had some kind of parachute. Well, I didn't think anything of it, because I know that the land they were falling over was military land. Well, after arriving in Vegas, maybe a day or two later, I had seen the Phoenix lights story on the news, but I figured that since I wasn't the only one around Gila Bend who saw them, that the real story would soon be known. And then, some time later, I had read something about the flares, so I figured "case closed", but to this day, I can't believe all the people out there that are still trying to prove that the flare theory is wrong with their video analysis and photo reconstruction techniques. For anyone that thinks I'm wrong, or making this up, I will take any lie detector test that anyone wants to give me, pertaining to the Phoenix lights incident. Thank you.
Where have you been Mike??? This is OLD news. It is obvious that you have not even looked at the abundance of credible information to the contrary. You are focusing on ONE video that may or may not be flares and the initial dis and mis-information, while ignoring the thousands of reports of actualy craft that traveled throughout AZ , New Mexico and Nevada on March 13, 1997 for many hours. We're talking about a mile wide, roof top V shaped object with rock solid equidistant lights that glided silently thruout an entire state for hours. Flares cannot do that!
Besides multiple craft compiled from hundreds of multiple reports to the National UFO Reporting Center , Village Labs, AZ MUFON & then Councilwoman Frances Barweel (which are brilliantly illustrated at http://www.thephoenixlights/GAP.htm), the unusual phenomena were around for weeks BEFORE the mass sighting. There is also photos and video to confirm.
Do your homework man before jumping on board with the dis-information that has already been discredited by experts in the field years ago.
BTW the best example of how innane the 'flare theory' is when 3 air national guard units TRIED to re-enact the Phoenix Lights in March 2000 after announcing the "show" majorly in the media for days before. Not only was their lame attempt a major joke on the news, but it convinced the witnesses once and for all that the Phoenix Lights were definitely NOT FLARES.
The Phoenix Lights have also shown up for decades over other US cities, including the Lubbic Lights in the 60's, Hudson Valley in the early 80's and Stephenville Texas in 2008, plus other countries who have established the anomalous nature of these sightings including UK and Belguim in the 80's and 90's and St. Petersburg, Russia one month before the AZ 1997 incident.
Even the former Governor Symington, who was also military and a pilot, came forward a couple years ago to state that he witnessed the enormous Phoenix Lights craft with lights and it was not man-made.