Some witnesses say
flash wasn't meteor

SANTA FE, N.M. (Oct. 5, 1996) — Officials propose it was a meteor seen as far away as California that streaked across the heavens Thursday night. But some local eyewitnesses say what came from and disappeared into the dark sky was no space rock.

Kevin Walsh and his mother, Frances, both of Eldorado, N.M., were driving back from Albuquerque on Interstate 25 when they spotted what looked like an approaching airplane and pulled on to the shoulder.

"It wasn't, like, 'Cool, a UFO.' We pulled off because we thought it was going to crash into the highway," he said. "It never occurred to me that it was a meteor."

Walsh said the fast-moving lights traveled north, managed "a graceful, immediate pause," and then "shot east," apparently disappearing into the mountains.

Phil Romero, who lives on the south end of Agua Fria Street, said he was home, playing his accordion with the lights off, when he spotted about 100 yards away what looked like a "helicopter without rotors, just a fuselage" trailed by sparks. By the time he put down his instrument and walked to the window to get a better look, the light had disappeared.

A third witness reported seeing "a string of seven lights, emerald green in color" shoot across Siringo Road, vanishing into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Despite the proximity of the putative sightings, no one reported hearing any accompanying sounds. Other witnesses, however, reported seeing a larger-than-normal meteor along the horizon.

Doug Bland, an amateur astronomer in Eldorado, said the meteor appeared "greenish-white with bits of orange" for about 15 seconds before breaking into eight separate pieces.

"It was absolutely gorgeous." Peggy Prince said what she and a friend saw was "a white ball streaking across the sky with red and yellow sparks and a very distinct tail" about 15 degrees from the horizon and with a 10-degree downward trajectory.

"It was the biggest one I'd ever seen," she said. "It was beautiful."

Official pronouncements were less remarkable.

"It was not on our radar. We're assuming it was a meteor," said a Federal Aviation Administration representative in Albuquerque.

However, Neil Weathers, an Albuquerque-based air-traffic controller for the FAA, said, "It was a pretty heavy-duty meteor that impacted in Northern New Mexico."

He said did not know where in the region the meteor might have landed. "I don't think any of the people who called were concerned that it was anything other than a meteor," Weathers said. "But it was quite large."

A public information officer at the Air Force Systems Command 6585th Test Group, which tests navigational systems, gyroscopes and accelerometers instruments that are likely useful in extreme maneuvers reportedly seen said he had only read of the sighting in the local newspaper. The division is part of Holloman Air Force Base.

At first, some said it might have been a falling satellite. But the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., which tracks satellite debris, said the flash could not have been caused by any items it was following and was likely a meteor or other natural phenomenon.

Meteors are pieces of metallic or stony matter that enter Earth's atmosphere, heating up through friction with air and creating bright streaks of light popularly called shooting stars or falling stars. They usually burn up before reaching the Earth's surface. |