The Phoenix Lights (1997)

1. ~20:30 — the V-shaped object: moving south from the Nevada line across Arizona, many witnesses described a silent, enormous triangle or V that appeared to occult the stars behind it.
2. ~22:00 — the hovering row of lights: a static line of lights over Phoenix that winked out one by one.

The Maryland Air National Guard confirmed an A-10 flare-drop exercise (LUU-2 illumination flares) over the Barry Goldwater Range that night; flares descending and extinguishing behind a ridgeline match the 22:00 sighting, and this is the widely accepted explanation for that episode.^[1] The earlier 20:30 V-shaped object is more contested: skeptics argue it was a high-flying line of aircraft plus a misperception effect, while witnesses insist it was a single solid structure.^[2]

Then-Governor Fife Symington defused the episode at a 1997 press conference featuring an aide in an alien costume. A decade later he stated publicly that he too had seen the V-shaped object and considered it unlike any aircraft he knew.^[3]

The flares explain the most dramatic "hovering row," but the earlier V-shaped object remains unresolved.^[1][4] The case is a reminder that one "event" can be a stack of independent phenomena; separating them is the only way to avoid being led by the easiest part or hijacked by the most mysterious.