The Night Arizona Looked Up: Inside the Phoenix Lights of 1997
The evening of Thursday, 13 March 1997 found an unusual number of Arizonans already outside and looking up. Comet Hale-Bopp was approaching its closest pass to Earth and was easily visible to the naked eye, and families across the state had carried lawn chairs into their backyards to watch it. Whatever else is true of the next three hours, more eyes were on the desert sky that night than on almost any other night of the decade.
The first report did not come from Arizona at all. At about 7:55 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, a witness in Henderson, Nevada, telephoned the National UFO Reporting Center to describe a large V-shaped object travelling southeast, carrying several lights along its leading edge and making a sound the caller compared to rushing wind.
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