Green Fireball image from Life Magazine April 7, 1952

 

 

 

During the late 1940s and early 1950s the State of New Mexico became a hotbed for fireball sightings. What was so peculiar about this episode in fireball history was not only the amount of sightings that were reported, but the bright green color that was associated with them. The fireballs attracted the attention of the U.S. government, and with good reason. Most of the sightings just so happened to take place around military installations or highly sensitive scientific training areas. New Mexico was, and still is a haven for these kind of places due to its remote desert and mountainous environment. In fact, it was at Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945 that the first atomic bomb was tested.

 

          Green fireballs are nothing new. They have been seen and recorded by conscientious scribes for centuries. On August 13, 1887 J.N. Lockyer of the Royal Society of London, "observed in the northeast a magnificent fireball of emerald-green colour, as bright as Jupiter, with a very slow motion."

 

          In 1880, Henry Corder of the Royal Astronomial Society made some astute observations in an article he wrote for them. He stated, "About 10 percent of all shooting stars show a distinct colour, the most usual being orange or red...green is a tolerably common colour, especially in slow moving fireballs about equal to Venus in lustre; they generally have a short train of red sparks."

 

          A green fireball was seen over New York State in 1828. It was described as being "Fine grass green with scintillations given off."

 

          These 19th century reports show that the green fireball, though rare, is hardly unique. It is interesting to note that two of the accounts talk about "slow motion" or "slow moving fireballs." This is a trait shared with the green fireball frenzy that would hit the skies over New Mexico in the mid 20th century.

 

          The years immediately following the 2nd World War were years of suspicion and intense anxiety. It is easy to see how a disillusioned public thought that it as possible that our planet was the target of some hostile alien invasion. The worlds two new superpowers; the United States, and the Soviet Union, were engaging in an arms race. The threat of nuclear attack was not only real, but some thought imminent. It was during this time that the green fireball drama began to unfold. The first sightings took place in November 1948 when people reported seeing strange lights in the sky over Albuquerque, New Mexico. These green lights were at first attributed to being green flares. They were low on the horizon, and furthermore the descriptions given by eyewitnesses told officials at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque that they were similar to the ones used by the military for training purposes. For a short while, anyway, the fireballs were ignored by authorities. However, on December 05, 1948 an Air Force transport plane was flying close to Albuquerque at an altitude of about 18,000 feet when the crew noticed a bright green fireball in front of them. The crew reported that the fireball moved upward before leveling off. Meteors, though they do appear to sometimes shoot horizontally across the sky usually descend at angle close to 45 degrees to the horizon. To the crew of this airplane this did not seem to be a meteor. They reported the incident to the tower at Kirtland.

 

          The next report was even more dramatic, and occurred on the same night that the transport plane had observed their fireball. A civilian plane flying close to Las Vegas, New Mexico reported that a fireball had almost collided with their plane. The captain of the plane stated that he at first thought that the object was a shooting star. However, he soon realized that the flat trajectory of the fireball ruled this out. It first appeared as an orange-red color, but quickly turned to green as it approached the aircraft. The pilot was foced to take evasive action in order to avoid a collision. Due to the time and location of this report, it is distinctly possible that the crew of this civilian plane saw the same fireball that the military transport plane had seen.

 

          After getting wind of these two reports the Air Force was finally convinced that something strange might be going on, and that they should investigate the matter. Not only had one of these fireballs almost collided with a civilian aircraft, but they were also being spotted near Sandia Base and Los Alamos. Both of these places were nuclear research facilities. Undoubtedly this made Air Force officials very nervous. They called in Dr. Lincoln La Paz of the Institute of Meteorics at the University of New Mexico. La Paz was recognized as an expert on meteors, and had been working in the field for over 30 years. He had published numerous papers and treatises on the subject. If anyone could get to the bottom of this mystery he was the man to do it.

 

          LaPaz read the reports and at first thought that the fireballs might be meteors. He had found meteorites before by using a unique method. He would gather eyewitness reports and use them to get the general direction of the fireball. Using the data from these reports he would plot a flight path which would lead him to the general location of the fall. However, after interviewing several people he soon realized that he was dealing with something on a grander scale. There were at least 8 different fireballs seen by people on the night of December 05 alone. After a diligent search he came up empty handed. No trace of a meteorite could be found at any of the possible fall sites.

 

          The Air force was now truly concerned for the security of their military installations. The green fireballs had not abated in their invasion of the New Mexico sky. In fact, the number of reports increased over the following weeks. They were spotted about every night, and not once was a meteorite ever found. Even Dr. La Paz was a witness to one of these fireballs, and in his professional opinion it was not a meteor that he had seen. Throughout the months of December 1948 and January 1949 there was hardly a night that went by without a green fireball sighting. What bothered investigators the most was that this phenomena seemed to be unique to New Mexico.

 

         There were plenty of theories floating around, but the one that bothered people the most was the theory that the green fireballs were some kind of new Soviet research instrument, perhaps even the new prototype of some new missle system. Something had to be done. That much was certain, especially after Dr. La Paz suggested that the fireballs might be of artificial origin and notnatural phenomena. On February 16, 1949 a conference was held at Los Alamos to discuss the green fireball phenomena. After discussing the subject in great length it was decided unanimously that the green fireballs did indeed exist. There were too many witnesses including people whose characters were beyond reproach. What the conference did not agree on, however, was the origin of these fireballs. Were they artificial? or were they some kind of natural phenomena like meteors. Most of the conference attendees believed that they were some kind of natural phenomena. However, Dr. La Paz and some other disagreed. It was decided to employ the Air Forces Cambridge research laboratory to help solve the mystery.

 

The name of the study was called Project Twinkle. The purpose was to photograph the fireballs by means of a theodolite, telescope and a camera. Project Twinkle went into action in early 1950. However, after a little more than a year with no conclusive results it was determined that it was not worth pumping anymore money into the study. Nothing even resembling a green fireball had been photographed.  There was a war going on in Korea and the funding was just not there. The final report of this project listed a number of possible explanations for the fireballs. The list included; balloons, airplanes, smoke rockets, birds, and meteors.

 

After the demise of Project Twinkle the green fireballs seemed to vanish with it. Reports that had been coming in by droves now only trickled in a few at a time. They eventually faded from public view, but not entirely. In the years since the New Mexico outbreak there have been scattered reports of green fireballs similar to the ones seen during the late 1940s and early 1950s. On September 13, 2007 at around 3:00 A.M. an emerald green fireball about the size of the full moon lit up the sky of New Mexico. It was seen in places as far apart as Socorro and Santa Fe, and was captured on film by a camera at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque.