UAP Reported at Sandia Base, 1948-1950

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THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO
ALBUQUERQUE
INSTITUTE OF METEORITICS
May 23, 1950
To:
Lt. Co~onel Doyle Rees , Connnanding Officer
17th District, O. S. I .
From:
Lincoln La.Paz, Director
Institute of 1Jeteoritics
Subject:
Anomalous Luminous Phenomena (Seventh Report)
1 .
In the second repor t of this series , dated 194:8, December 20, the
VIriter listed ten significant differences bet·,veen the bri~t f;reen horizon­
tally-moving fireballs observed in the interval 1948, Decer,tber ·5- 20 , aud
typical met eors .
These differences were the following :
( 1) The horizontal nature of the pat,1s of nost of t he December
fir eballs is most unusual.
Genuine meteors are rarely observed to move
in horizontal paths .
( 2) Again the very low hei ght of the December fireball discussed
in s ection 2 above sets it off in sharp contrast f rom the Genuine
meteors for which heights of the order of 40 or more ,niles are ~o • •
mally observed.
( 3) The velocity determined for the fireball of Dece~ber 12 is
much less than the velocities det ermined from typical meteors (and
yet is considerably greater than the speeds of the V- 2 Roc~ets or
jet planes or of conventional flar es) .
( 4) In the case of meteorites that penetrate to as low levels
as that determined for the fireball of D~cember 12 , the observed l u­
minous phenomena ar e always accompanied by very violent -noises .
No
noises whatever have been observed in connecti on with the various
December fi r eballs so far investigated.
(Note added on 1950, :¥.ay 23:
Possible exceptions to the noiselessness of green fireballs ar e t.:"le
incidents of 1949 , January 30, and 1949, December 4.)
( 5) Genuine meteors normally show r emar kable variations in
brightness, beginning as fine thin hair lines , which are scar cely
visible to the observer, and then brightening up to flash out near
the end of their paths .
In the case of the December firetalls most
of the observers have reported tha·G the green balls appear ed almost
instantly at their full br i ghtness.
NW 91526
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