My Own UFO Sighting
While driving north on Highway 5 just north of Orange County on Saturday night, I saw something quite startling in the sky. But it wasn’t just me, reports have started to appear online describing exactly what I witnessed.
My sister and I were coming back from San Diego at about 11:50PM on June 14th when something flashed across the sky in the upper left corner of the windshield. It was so startling that I took my foot off the accelerator and was about to hit the brakes. At first, I thought it was some sort of fireworks display, but Disneyland was 10 miles behind us.
What I saw was a very bright, gold point of light which left a bright green streak behind it. Parallel and right next to the green trail was a line of smoke or debris which disappeared or became invisible when the object no longer gave off any light. The entire event lasted little more than one second. In that time, the green streak covered about 30 degrees of the sky. It appeared to be headed north and possibly towards the ground, although this could have been an illusion if the object was at an extreme altitude. Reports of this event have also been logged from as far north as British Columbia.
Friends and acquaintances here in Southern California have seen other strange green, streaking objects over the last decade or so, but the sightings are not as spectacular. The last one I observed looked as if it was shooting straight towards the ground from what was no more than 2000 feet, right over the middle of Los Angeles in the late afternoon. Others I have spoken with have recalled similar experiences.
These sightings share many similarities with the “green fireball” phenomenon, which plagued the New Mexico skies in the late 1940s and early ’50s. The events so disturbed the Air Force and other authorities that they ordered a study (eventually organized as “Project Twinkle”) that included meteorite expert Dr. Lincoln La Paz. Despite their concerns that the objects might have been some sort of Soviet probes, no evidence was ever found to support this idea. Nevertheless, La Paz could come up with no other explanation, and settled on the artificial probe theory.
In 1952, Project Blue Book head Edward Ruppelt was informed by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory of their theory that the fireballs represented some sort of objects launched from ET craft orbiting the Earth. Of course, this was not made public until many years later.
On July 24, 1949, a green fireball shot over Soccoro, New Mexico, and personnel from the School of Mines were able to collect samples. They found that it contained large particles of copper, which would account for the observed color. Copper burns with a bright green color. Most meteorites are composed of silicate materials and other trace elements, but little or no copper.
As far as I know, no one has been able to determine what causes green meteorites or fireballs. They may not even be meteorites, but they are undeniably a real phenomenon.
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Jun 17 2008 
June 17th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
So, how big was it from your perspective?
June 17th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
What you saw was not a UFO since it was not flying and there is not enough information to know if it was an object. It was an unidentified atmospheric phenomena. Of course, unidentified does not mean unidentifiable.
June 17th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
The Sage has spoken.
June 17th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
RPJ,
The point of light was about the size of Venus at it’s brightest (60 arc seconds or so.) the trail was about twice as wide.
June 17th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Sage,
Dammit! I thought I’d seen an extraterrestrial spacecraft!
June 17th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Heed the Sage, you foolish little man!
June 17th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I’d hope Sage would follow up on the whole “how big was it from your perspective” question which desperately needs, if not sage, then some other hallucigenic herb.
Also Greg isn’t now the time to undergo extensive hypnotherapy so we can get some sort of “missing time” probe story?
Still I’m glad you survived this Fortean adventure.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Adam G,
Silence, parroting puppet!
June 18th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I believe you. Funny thing, I was thinking about green fireballs, and
burning copper when I first skimmed the title of the post-then cocked an eyebrow
when I read the closing paragraph.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Neat image, by the way-where’s it from?
June 18th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Craig,
Well, it’s funny, apparently there are green-glowing meteorite trails, but I haven’t been able to find any other reference to one with a gold point in front. Also, looking over sites which discuss elements and compounds in found and excavated meteorites, I can’t find any reference to copper as one of the main components.
The image is from a Life magazine feature from the late 1950s and is in fact a painting by La Paz’s wife, based on their sighting!
June 19th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Congrats Greg!
This is a nice UAP / UFO sighting.
I’ve always liked the ole Green Fireballs aspect of ufological history.
Funny that your “real” sighting and your “hoax” both involve the color GREEN.
And didn’t La Paz end up integrated into the history of the Roswell incident?
– SMiles
June 19th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Glad to hear you saw some kind of UFO Greg. I remember you complaining some time back that you hadn’t. Hard to do anyway while sitting in all of that light pollution of yours.
I saw a slew of green streaks while living in Apple Valley, CA. I was a good 12 miles from Victorville so you can imagine our skies at night. Difficult to find a black patch sometimes when there are so many stars.
Anyway, I saw a great number of them (probably 10 or so) on Halloween night at about 9:00 p.m. in 1996 and yes, they do look like they’re going to crash into the ground but the following day I saw that Arizona had reported the same incident at about the same time.
Dang sky is so deceiving sometimes, especially if you’re somewhat delirious from a long hot day in San Diego and then that long – what should be 2-hour drive but isn’t due to the backup at the inspection station on Interstate 5 and then the back up near Mission Viejo. Then we have to consider the oncoming headlights for a few hours, they really drain the brain.
Hey, figured since everyone was picking on you and debunking your UFO that I would come in and just kill the sucker. lol.
Found this though in Tom’s Astronomy Blog…
By, Dan Burke on January 9th, 2007
Last night 1/8/2006 around 6:45pm central time, in Mellisa/Anna, Texas area driving North on US. Highway 75 I saw a green meteor with an orange colored flame at the front and a green tail come straight down. It looked very close. It was awesome!
Tom’s Astronomy Blog
June 19th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Count me in on the ’seen a green fireball’ crowd. I saw one in the Glendale Arizona area back on 19 Oct. 1996. It was so unusual looking that I wrote down the details of the sighting. It was traveling east to west in the northern sky at about 9:45 pm. It differed in that it went from green to red and then winked out. The tail or trail however wasn’t like that of any meteor I’d ever witnessed before. It was unbroken. It reminded me of the Star Trek TNG warp special effect.
Carlos in ATx
June 20th, 2008 at 12:41 am
If you had a T-Top like me you would have had a much better view of the “green streak”.
June 20th, 2008 at 1:10 am
elfis/ miles,
Ix-nay on the oax-hay!!
Anyway, it appears that La Paz was contacted by the AAF to determine the trajectory of the Roswell object, although I’m not at all certain if there is good documentation on this.
June 20th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Atrueoriginall,
I know the Apple Valley area. I’ve flown from a dry lake there a few times. It does get very dark out there.
No one seems to be really debunking the sighting, probably because I left the interpretation open, with a meteorite being the likely culprit. Although, as I said, there seems to be no explanation for the green color or the gold thing in front. Perhaps it was just space junk.
Many spy satellites are placed in polar orbit, which would explain the south-to-north trajectory.
June 20th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Carlos,
Seems that these things aren’t that rare, although it still doesn’t explain the New Mexico “flap” of the late 1940s, especially if we’re talking crashing satellites. Actually, the descriptions from the time differ a bit (or more) from all of these green streaks we’re seeing now. Yours sounds pretty amazing.
June 20th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Gerry,
Probably, although I don’t know how far my peripheral vision extends, expecially outside of the lenses of my glasses.
June 20th, 2008 at 1:57 am
BTW – I read an account of the “green steak” on a internet message board(a hockey board) a few days ago that corroborates what you saw.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:21 am
there’s a fascinating account of the ‘green fireballs’ at Project 1947.
check out astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky’s experiments re > artificial meteors
quote: December 1946
Zwicky secures cooperation of Army Ordnance officers and obtains payload space in a V-2 rocket for use in his dramatic experiment. The proof-of-principle launch will be conducted at night to allow visual and photographic observation of the artificial meteors produced by ejection of small Army rifle grenades at high altitude. When the shaped charges are fired, they will produce jets of iron or copper particles that should be briefly visible as meteor-like trails. Dr James Van Allen of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory supervises installation of the test equipment in the V-2 warhead. Actual construction of the grenade launcher assembly is handled by the New Mexico School of Mines in Albuquerque.
16 December 1946
In calibration of the imminent experiment, rifle grenades are launched to low altitude at night from the Organ Mountains near the White Sands missile range launch site and are photographed by telescopes and cameras.
====
things get strange when Harvard astronomer Fred Whipple ” reverses his earlier support for the project…”
m
June 21st, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I love that drawing!
Congratulations Greg on your UFO sighting! (Couldn’t one say that a thing zooming through the sky is “flying” or at least close enough? Ah, UFO semantics!) Aside from all the other green fireball sightings you’ve mentioned, there was one not long ago ( couple months back I believe) here in Oregon, and a few years ago (and I think more recently as well) up in Washington and Brittish Columbia. . .
June 25th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Regan,
Thank you. You would think that with all the “green meteorite” sightings, there would be some sort of explanation offered by now.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:27 am
No matter what is was, it’s a cool thing to see! I have seen one interesting meteorite fall, that really took my breath away, but nothing on par with your report.
Had I been quicker, I could have shared the viewing of a strange fireball, that both my wife and co-worker viewed from our living room in 1996-7?
We were sitting around one evening talking, my wife and co-worker were sitting on the couch near the window, I was sitting opposite them in a chair across the living room. The curtains were drawn almost completely. While she was talking, my wife got up and walked over to the front screen porch door and with increasing volume and pitch, exclaimed: “Wow! WoW! WOW!!”, my co-worker looked through the small break in the curtain and saw the same thing my wife was seeing, I unfortunately did not get to the door quickly enough, in a matter of seconds it was gone.
I made them both describe in detail what they saw, as it was obvious they were intrigued but not overly excited about what they had seen, and it was clear to me they would soon forget about it.
They both described a “Fireball” Greenish-blue, with a trail. What was surprising was that it came over the corn field (We lived on a farm at the time) about 20ft off the ground, in a horizontal path, and then after crossing over the corn field, it turned and went over the top of the trees and disappeared over the horizon.
With my limited knowledge of meteors, I think it’s safe to say they don’t turn, or rise in their trajectory.
I only regret that I wasn’t fast enough to catch a glimpse of it myself.
I have seen “U.F.O’s” on two occasions, and am therefore more open to the concept, but I am hesitant to jump to the conclusion that they are ET in origin. I think that what we don’t know about the universe, for that matter our world, so vastly out weighs what little we do know, that it is silly to claim an ET connection, without further evidence.
Cool report!
August 17th, 2009 at 11:40 am
i have seen the green streaking light or object this past year,twice. i wondered what the green object could have been,I’ve seen white falling flashes but never green.