FOIA: Corona NM Sighting 07JAN50 Classified as Meteor

NM_JAN_7_1950.pdf
Corona, NM Sighting 07JAN50 Classified: (ASTRO:Meteor)
This is a report of a round fireball type object which changed colors from yellowish white, orange, blue green before it passed out of view.
Document date: 1950-01-07
Department: OSI Kirtland AFB
Author: Various
Document type: Report
pages: 6


Archivist's Notes: This file is in fairly good condition with a couple of pages with sections hard to read. After the investigation it was determined that this object was a meteor, though as usual nothing on how the determination was made is included in the report. The witness was a motor maintenance officer from Holloman AFB NM.

This very well could have been a meteor. There is very little information here, other than the name of the Captain that made the report. The sighting was very brief, some 10 seconds, and the description is in line with many other reports of "fireballs" from that time and area.

It is worth noting that the agent who investigated this report was the same one that had made his own report just the day before of a 45 minute long sighting. It can be found here as "Alamogordo, NM Sighting 06JAN50 Classified (ASTRO: Canopus)". This lends more reliability to the agent's report, as he seems to have been very active in investigating these things.

Now with this object, I’m not so sure if that really was a meteor.
According to the witnesses this ‘ball of light’ was visible for 10 seconds.
That is a pretty slow meteor.
I don't know the area - there is only the description of a mountain range close by where the object disappeared... this made me think that observers would have only a short lived visible view of the object.
This has been taken from pdf. page 4:
Color: First appearance was yellowish white.
During it’s travel downward at 60 degree angle, object appeared to be more orange than originally with a trail of flame projecting out to its rear or opposite the direction was traveling. When it reached position where it leveled out it became a bright blue-green in color and remained that color until it passed out of sight.