Disk over Tonopah, AZ
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
To start, I am reporting this about 90 mins after witnessing the event. This event took place at work (largest nuclear power plant in the nation, located west of Phoenix, AZ) The night is clear, full moon, not airplanes in the area (restricted air space). At about 0235 hours, I was on top of one of the main building roofs (I’m apart of facilities “protection”) I was walking around to stretch my legs. I noticed a light from a distant mountain, so I took out special night enhancing opticals (I can’t say exactly what they are, it would be a breach of security). The light proved to be nothing, but for the heck of it. I took the optical and looked at the moon to see how it would display. When I did this, I saw what appeared two circles or dish flying by the moon. I looked without the optical and saw nothing. I once again looked through the optical and saw them again. I watched them head northwest flying in aridic behavior. One made a right angle turn while the other went out of view. I ran over to the office/post on the roof to get my partner. He came out with his opticals and we both started looking for these objects/lights. We located three far west over the mountain range. These objects/lights would speed up and slow down, disappear and reappear through our optical at no point in time could we see these with the naked eye. My partner then discovered a spot in the sky were there were many in one location. We estimated them to be about 10 to 15 thousand feet in the sky, we also eliminated the possibly of them being aircraft, bats, owls, drones, etc, because the right angle turns, speeding up and slowing down, we even googled how high can bats and owls’ flight. Lastly, one mode of vision on our opitcals allows us to see edges of objects these were clearly round. After about 15 mins of watching these objects in the highly populated spot, we took a break from using the optical because of strain on our eyes and necks hurting from looking almost directly up. As we took our break, we looked back to the spot with only our eyes and one of disks appears. The disk appeared to be semi translucent made no noise traveled from northwest to the southeast. There were no lights on it, but the surface appeared to look jellyfishy. We both think either the dish was picking up light from the facility or the moon, which allowed us to see it. (leaning more to facility light, because when the dish started flying over the open dark desert, we lost sight of it) The was the agreed description among us. The dish literally appeared out of nowhere and quickly faded out of sight. While it was moving, I yelled to my partner who had his optical still on. He quickly looked at it under “edge mode” and he said it looked like a donut. We estimated the object to be no ! higher than 8 to 10 thousand feet, while the other objects were now thought to be 30 to 40 thousand feet. We both once again looked at the spot where we say many flighting around and there were only a few, plus they were flighting very slowly or were floating. After several more minutes when by the remaining high-altitude object disappeared. During this event I was able to take my cell phone place into the optic to video record and take a series of photos of the many objects, I was not able to get the picture of the actual dish but did get another series of photos of some type of light/dish appear in photos moving but can be seen with the naked eye. These photos and video are available on request.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #164412). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2021-08-22 → 2021-09-08
From the same sky
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July 13, 2021 · 3:30 AM · LIGHT
Tonopah, AZ
I walked out my house at around 3:30AM on august 13 2021 and saw what looked like a star move in jolts I then knew it was a ufo because of the movements, I called my boyfriend outside and we saw about 9+ together within the range of 3 hours, two stayed in the same section hovering around so as we watched those and saw the others in passing, most were headed south. One was headed north, this specific one flew the fastest leaving no trail just a fast dot moving , I chased after it and it stopped and seemed as if it came closer, I called my mom and we all saw as the ufo moved into the clouds, I was the only one to see the ufo close the cloud to cover itself. We watched this ufo till the sun came up to see if it would leave but no, as the stars started to fade into the bright sky the ufo was the only bright dot left in the sky within the cloud. It wasn’t until the sun fully came up until we couldn’t see anymore. Two ufos had what looked like headlights as well.! Others also looked as if they flew inside the clouds intentionally too. On August 19 me and my boyfriend saw another ufo in front of the house, this ufo stopped moving when we recorded and moved as soon as the phone was out away. Every single one looked like a bright white dot.
July 23, 2020 · 7:30 PM · FIREBALL
Tonopah, AZ
It was in the afternoon around sunset, I live in tonopah Arizona and I still don’t have electricity and my pump for my water went out, we sit on 2 acres, and we have a shared well, luckily the neighbors had the well turned on so I had water pressure outside, so I told my wife I was long to shower outside and she brought the soap and my 2 sons were with me, then something catches my eye in the sky and it was a fireball with small fire balls beside it, my wife right away trout it was a meteor, I told her no because the meteor did not dissalear or impact land , what we saw was the object become a fire in the sky and moved like a snake, then that’s when you could see the lights a and the flames were gone and the lights would contract and expand a few times, I would say it was a total of 8 lights or more.then they disappeared. But not 10 seconds later you could see them again and did the same thing , contract and expand, it was exciting to see but later on some f! ear kicked in.
July 23, 2020 · 7:30 PM · FIREBALL
Tonopah, AZ
It was in the afternoon around sunset, I love in tonopah Arizona and I still don’t have electricity and my pump for my water went out, we sit on 2 acres, and we have a shared well, luckily the neighbors had the well turned on so I had water pressure outside, so I told my wife I was long to shower outside and she brought the soap and my 2 sons were with me, then something catches my eye in the sky and it was a fireball with small fire balls beside it, my wife right away trout it was a meteor, I told her no because the meteor did not dissalear or impact land , what we saw was the object become a fire in the sky and moved like a snake, then that’s when you could see the lights a and the flames were gone and the lights would contract and expand a few times, I would say it was a total of 8 lights or more.then they disappeared. But not 10 seconds later you could see them again and did the same thing , contract and expand, it was exciting to see but later on some f! ear kicked in.
April 13, 2020 · 4:00 AM · LIGHT
Tonopah, AZ
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March 1, 2020 · 8:30 PM · TRIANGLE
Tonopah, AZ
Hello, I live Tonopah Arizona, which happens to be within ten miles of the nations largest nuclear generating station – Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. I have observed many strange lights/objects in the sky since I moved into this area in 1996. Tonopah is about 40 miles west of downtown Phoenix. My children grew up here in Tonopah and have also witnessed many strange occurrences in our night skies. I am not writing today to report a recent event. I was not aware there was such an entity as the UFO Center for reporting until I watched the documentary by Dr. Lynne Kitei called ‘Phoenix lights’. I do not recall seeing this UFO, nor did my children report seeing this specific event, dated March 13, 1997. What I am reporting today is the continual sightings around the Palo Verde area in general. From my observations the visits continue to be in the March and October timeline of the year, however, that’s not to say previous observations were not made during other months of the year. Fact: Palo Verde down-powers one of the three power generating units to refuel and complete required maintenance every March/April and October/November on a permanent basis. Observation: Nuclear power would most likely be of great interest to other life forms outside our world. If others worlds are observing earth, powering down and then powering up nuclear generators could attract their interest or attention. I have never tracked or reported any of the 10+ sightings I have observed, at any time, in the past 25 years. I simply acknowledged that there are extraterrestrials and go about my life. The last sighting for me was in March, 2020. I have a direct view of Palo Verde from my backyard. There is nothing but flat desert from my backyard to the corner where Palo Verde is situated about ten miles away. At night, it looks like a city, all lit up and naturally, we look at it nightly. One night, while sitting at the table with my husband, both of us looking out towards Palo Verde, three lights appear suddenly in our field of vision. They are directly above Palo Verde, high up in the sky. I ask my husband if he see’s the lights – Yes. We both see the lights. There are three round lights in a triangle formation, each light equally distanced from the other. We watch, we watch, perhaps watching for at least 5 minutes, when suddenly one of the lights just fade away. So now there are only two lights, still equally distanced. We continue watching. We both have our phones, and with the camera’s, we take a couple pictures. However, there is nothing on the picture that is identifiable. The lights are too far away to be captured on an I-phone camera, it’s just a speck in the background. I grab the binoculars. Now I can clearly identify the lights in the sky. I observe halos of colors (amber, green, blue) that surround each of the circles of light. The lights aren't moving. Not at all. They are stable and steady. I give the binoculars to my husband, and he watches the lights. There are still only two lights at this time. Again, I look through the binoculars and as I am watching the lights, the third light slowly comes back and now I see three equally glowing lights again. We continue to observe the lights until they disappeared suddenly from the sky. One minute they are there, the next gone, just disappeared. However, we continue watching. A minute or two later, the lights re-appear, but they have moved to a different position in the sky. They were directly in front of us last time, and this time they are to our right. We continued to observe three round lights in a triangle formation, each light equally distanced from the other. The whole observation was at least 10-15 minutes long. Again, I saw what I saw, acknowledged that there is extraterrestrials and we both went about life, never reporting anything to anyone. But one never fully forgets what we have observed in the Tonopah sky at night. I have many of these stories, my kids have stories, I’m sure others here in Tonopah have seen ‘something’ as well. What I can say today is that the very next time this type of phenomenon is observed in the Tonopah sky, I will be sure to report it on your web-site asap! If someone were interested in setting up a good camera in hopes of getting some video, I certainly have the place to do it!
December 22, 2017 · 6:45 PM · FIREBALL
Tonopah, AZ
After making a 90-degree turn South, it looked more like a ball of Fire with a glowing smoke around it. For approximately three to five minutes after the ball of fire was out of view the smoke glowed in the path that the object took clearly marking the 90-degree turn. I briefly mention to my son it look like what the Aurora Borealis would look like up north in Canada or Alaska. The fact that it continue to Glow and that we could not come to a consensus as to what it was made me file this report.