Anybody else see strange lights west of Phoenix last night (12/04/09)?

Last night at about 8:00 pm, as I was driving home from dropping my son off at his grandma's house in the west valley, I saw some very strange stuff in the sky. The first object looked exactly like many large incoming meteors that I've seen in my life, a fireball with a long tail and what appeared to be little pieces of it breaking off. Only this one was pure white, which was odd cuz most of the meteors I've seen have had a greenish color. It was the kind that just kept going too, I'm sure others who have seen meteors that don't fizzle out quickly know it's a bit frightening, to the point where I was ready to brace for impact. The object was falling straight downward, and finally it just disappeared, it didn't really fizzle out like meteors I've seen, but I was sure that's what it was.

Then, under the area in the sky where the fireball vanished, two more appeared right next to each other, with the same characteristics, except the tails on these ones were blowing sideways and were arched a bit. I knew at that point they weren't meteors. They were falling downward and kind of south, both in the same direction, but again the tails were arched sideways, and suddenly the one on the left completely changed direction and was falling north while the other falling going south, then they both disappeared as well. Finally, a fourth white fireball appeared with the same arching tail as the other two, and disappeared like the rest.

This all happened pretty close to Luke AFB, so I'm pretty sure it was probably air force related, but i can't for the life of me figure out what they were doing. This was right over the city. I've seen flare drops over the Goldwater range close up when driving to San Diego at night, and those lights were nothing at all like that, not even close. The only (earthly) thing i can think of that it may have been, was perhaps parachuters with some kind of pyrotechnics attached to them, but the fireballs looked pretty large and i can't imagine them being safely attached to a person. I've actually seen night jumps as well, when the golden knights were in town to do the air show in March, and it also looked much different, they use all different colors and the sparklers are MUCH less intense than the fireballs i saw last night, when they jump it looks more like a flare drop, not meteors. I checked Luke's website this morning and there's nothing mentioned about any show this weekend, or any visiting parachute teams, i also checked the local news sites to see if their was anything about it but there wasn't.

Did anybody else in the valley see those lights?

EDIT: Nevermind, apparently many saw those lights, I did a little more googling and was able to confirm it was the AZ skyhawks parachute team....

Dec 4, 2008 Surprise Ballon Festival,
Surprise Recreation Compound, Surprise, AZ 8:00 pm
www.arizonaskyhawks.com...

Those guys are insane, anyway, mods feel free to delete this thread.

[edit on 5-12-2009 by 27jd]

reply to post by 27jd


Hey there, well I have no idea what you saw but it will be interesting to see who else saw anything in your area.

Thanks for posting, I always find these threads very interesting to watch and see how they develop. This one certainly sounds like the kind of thing that would have been noticed by others.

Woody

Originally posted by woodwytch
Thanks for posting, I always find these threads very interesting to watch and see how they develop. This one certainly sounds like the kind of thing that would have been noticed by others.

I'm hoping so. It would be nice if somebody a little further west saw it and could confirm if it was parachuters or not. Like i said though, the fire was being propelled somehow, since they had fiery (not smokey) tails, with what appeared to be big fiery chunks breaking away. If you've ever seen a bigger meteor coming in, the slower green ones, it's exactly what these looked like, but white, and changing directions.