12.04.2024

December 26, 1999 Springfield Missouri

The source of this information is from George Filer. He used to post a digital bulletin called “Filer’s files” and I found the information he published in his Filer’s files #2 for 2000.

Source material

The Filer’s file describes the event as:

MISSOURI UFO SPOTTED BY AIRLINE CREW

SPRINGFIELD -- While flying a B757 a commercial flight at 33,000 feet from LAX to CLT on December 26, 1999, the two pilots and two flight attendants were observing an earth satellite-passing overhead from the cockpit. It was well past sunset at about 7:00 PM CST. The earth satellite apparently flew into the terminator and disappeared while high overhead. The witness stated, “Within a moment or so, a white-lighted object overtook and passed us in fairly close proximity making at least 200 knots more than we were.” Our airspeed was .80 Mach and our ground speed was 483 knots or 550mph. The object was first noted south of our west to east course at a distance estimated to be from about 2 to 5 miles. It appeared to be at nearly the same or a slightly higher altitude. The object showed only a bright white light that appeared to be slightly disturbed by turbulence, or very slightly pulsating. Its course appeared constant, as did its altitude. It passed us and faded rather quickly from sight in about forty seconds.

A query was made to Memphis Center ARRTC as to any possible traffic. The controller said he had nothing on his scope that could be what we saw. We saw nothing on our TCAS, set to observe other transponders within 4,000 feet of our altitude and within 20 miles of horizontal distance. No red (left wing) position light and no fuselage red rotating beacons were sighted by any of the witnesses. No magnetic or electrical disturbances on our aircraft occurred. At least one passenger noted the object pass by our craft from the passenger cabin. Thanks to Peter Davenport at the National UFO Reporting Center, www.ufocenter.com Editor’s Note: Generally, radar operators are told not to confirm UFOs and to keep other traffic away.

The reference to NUFORC had me searching that database and I found the report that was made. I also found several other sightingsthat seemed to be of the same event.

Crew of B757 at FL330 passed on south side by white light making at least 200 knots more than we were. We were at .80 Mach and G/S of 483knots. Queried ATC about possible military target passing us, Memphis Center had nothing there.

While flying at 33,000 feet on a commercial flight from LAX to CLT on Dec 26, the 2 pilot crewmembers and 2 flight attendants were observing an earth satellite passing overhead from the cockpit of a B757. It was well past sunset at about 0100Z 27 Dec 1999. The earth satellite appararently flew into the terminator (it disappeared while high overhead). Within a moment or so, a white lighted object over took and passed us in fairly close proximity. The object was first noted south of our west to east course at a distance estimated to be from about 2 to 5 miles. It appeared to be at nearly the same or a slightly higher altitude. The object showed only a bright white light that appeared to be slightly disturbed by turbulence, or very slightly pulsating. It’s course appeared constant as did its alititude. It passed us and faded rather quickly from sight in a very brief amount of time, perhaps as long as forty seconds. A query was made to Memphis Center ARRTC as to any possible traffic. The controller said he had nothing on his scope that could be what we saw. We saw nothing on our TCAS, set to observe other transponders within 4,000 feet of our altitude and withi;n 20 miles of horizontal distance. No red (left wing)position light and no fuselage red rotating beacons were sighted by any of the witnesses. No magnetic or electrical disturbances on our aircraft occurred. At least one passenger noted the object pass by our craft from the passenger cabin.

Another report happened at 1930 on the same night. The location was in Arkansas south of Little Rock (Dallas and Grant counties.

The duration was 15 seconds.

At ten degrees above the horizon, above treeline on 200 ft. above sea level hills (70 ft. pine trees.) Globular Orange fireball size at my position, the size of a dime at arms’length. Object held level course at the speed of an airliner in daytime at level and constant flight. After completing 3/4 of horizon from the SW to SE it developed a tail and then a second fireball of the same size. Neither object being effected by gravity of headed downward. Both proceeded over the horizon and out of sight. At no time were red. green, white landing or strobe lights seen. Only the orange tail to form the second fireball of the same size flying level courses in tandem.

There was one additional sighting from New Orleans at 2000. The duration was 15-20 seconds.

ufo streaked across the sky, like to know what we saw.

My wife and I were sitting outside when she noticed a light in the sky behind me and exclaimed “look at that.” I looked up and observed a bright light moving rapidly North in a straight line. I watched the object until trees on the horizon blocked it from view. I thought the object was probably something burning up entering the atmosphere as it streaked across the sky, and when it was almost out of sight I thought I saw a splinter of light seperate. There were no navigation lights and it was larger than any meteor I ever saw. I have seen satellites but this was larger and brighter. This object left no tail, which is curious to me as I witnessed the space shuttle reentering the atmosphere to land in Florida. I am a pilot and my wife is a nurse.

I could find no other UFO reports related to this sighting.

Analysis

My first instinct is that this was probably a meteor fireball or satellite decay. There is no decay in Ted Molczan’s database and I examined the SEESAT mailing list for any observations of a decay. There was much discussion about Cosmos 2367’s rocket re-entering during this time period but it did not follow the track described. If this were a decay, I would have expected the group would have been looking for it and somebody would have concluded a decay had happened. This leaves us with a fireball meteor.

Unfortunately, the fireball database from the late 90s is very incomplete. The Internationale Meteor Organization did have a fireball database but it was from the early in mid-90s and did not cover 1999. The American Meteor Society’s on-line fireball database was not in full operation at the time. There were only 9 reports from the entire year (compared to over 10,000 in 2022).

I then remembered that there was a meteorobs mailing list I used to receive when I was an active observer in the 90s. A quick search found the mailing list database and there was a mention of a fireball seen and reported to a local astronomy club for the same date and time:

I saw what seemed to be a huge meteor burning up over Hattiesburg, MS on 12/26/99 at 7PM. Hattiesburg is about 55 miles north of the coast. The object was burning a bright red color and had a long tail. Random explosions where occuring in the tail as pieces must have been breaking off. It was on a trajectory that seemed to be moving across the sky and not towards the earth. I know it wasn’t very close, because it made no sound that I could here. It looked similar to giant roman candle and burned very bright from horizon to horizon in about 5 to 10 seconds. Definitely the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Did anyone else see it? It looked like it was going around the world.

It turns out that one of the members on the list performed an investigation. Dave Hostetter wrote the following about his findings on January 11, 2000:

....Back at the end of the year there were some media reports involving a meteor seen from Lafourche Parish in far southeastern Louisiana, near the towns of Larose and Cut Off. They reported a fireball seen moving west to east around 7:55 PM Central Standard Time on December 26. A piece was seen to break off, and some suggested that was responsible for a marsh fire about a mile long just northeast of Cut Off. During the last week of the year, I was contacted by several people looking for information.

There were other reports of a bright meteor that night, one moving roughly south to north at about 7 to 7:30 PM CST. I found first and second hand reports of that ranging from the small town of Jennings, Louisiana, to the area around Pensacola, Florida, and throughout southern and central Mississippi and Alabama. There has been some discussion on meteorobs lately about an object seen from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and that seems to have been this object.

Two such fireballs within an hour of each other seemed like a lot, and I suspected they were really reports of the same object. That’s what turned out to be true.

The time of 7:55 PM from the Lafourche reports turned out to be the time logged by the sheriff’s office when they were getting calls, not the time of the meteor. The times reported to me by the observers I spoke with were shakey, but it looks like the observations were indeed more like 7 to 7:30 PM. The object seen there was in fact not going west to east -- they all agreed it was going from south southwest to north northeast. It was described as brighter than Jupiter and about the brightness of Venus, pretty consistent with the reports of the other object. I’m absolutely convinced everyone was looking at the same thing.

The piece that fragmented appeared to do so only 10 to 15 degrees above the horizon as the object was moving away from Lafourche Parish, and is clearly not responsible for the marsh fire. The sheriff’s department there indicated that marsh fires are not very unusual, and have a number of different causes. One observer noted that it was a windy night, and that the wind is what blew the fire eastward for about a mile.

I thought it might be possible that the object was re-entering space debris, but I no longer believe that to be the case. There were three Russian re-entries expected for December 26/27, but none of them fit the bill. I think this was your basic natural fireball, visible from over the Gulf of Mexico, going approximately across the Mississippi Delta region, and then over Mississippi or Alabama....

There was also a report of a fireball seen in the vicinity of Atmore, Alabama in the December 29th edition of the Atmore Advance.

The article is limited on details but they gave a time of one of the observations as 7PM. The article gave brief descriptions of various witnesses. Many of the common meteor observation mistakes were made. A patrolman said it was not a meteor and thought it changed direction. He also gave it’s altitude as close to the ground. Many thought it was a crashing plane. Some helicopter pilots thought it might have been a missile from Eglin AFB. One observer did feel it was a bright meteor. When you look at the all the descriptions as a whole, they all seem to have seen a bright fireball meteor.

The only problem with the meteor explanation is the duration of “about 40 seconds” by the aircrew. There are plenty of fireball meteors that have had long durations. I wrote about one observed in Florida on April 25, 2017 in SUNlite 9-4. That meteor was recorded on video as lasting 20 seconds. In that event, most of the observers estimated the duration between 10-30 seconds. However, some gave their estimates as a minute or greater. Looking at the December 26, 1999 event, the bulk of the reports have durations that were shorter indicating the 40 second time scale was probably an overestimate. With a duration of 10-20 seconds, the chance of this being a fireball meteor increases.

I attempted to make a plot of the observations from NUFORC and the meteor observers list. The information was very limited but one can come up with a crude plot based on the basic azimuths found in the descriptions. While the data was limited, there was a reasonable correlation between the observations. Based on this information, the meteor was traveling East or North East and passed over the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

One final observation is that the pilots in the Boeing 757 indicated the object was close to the southern horizon because they stated it was about the same altitude as , or slightly above, their aircraft. This is what one would expect for an observation of a meteor that passed over Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama and was about 400-500 miles away. Since most meteors burn up between 50-75 miles altitude, the elevation angle would have been 10 degrees or less above the horizon.

Conclusion

The fact that there was a meteor observed to the south of the aircraft around the same time the aircraft reported seeing their UAP in that direction cannot be ignored. Add to this, the fact that the meteor was traveling in the correct direction and the location the aircrew reported makes a convincing argument that what was seen was this fireball meteor. I would classify this as a probable fireball meteor and remove this case from the Weinstein catalog.

Quelle: SUNlite 6/2023