College Park, MarylandJanuary 1963

On the night of January 9, 1963, a premedical student at the University of Maryland in College Park stepped outside his dormitory after hearing people shouting. He looked up and saw a spherical object, colored red-orange and about the size of a baseball, moving across the sky from west to east. The student watched the object through 7x50 binoculars as it passed overhead at an elevation of 35 to 40 degrees, traveling in a straight line from the western horizon to the eastern horizon. The sighting lasted three to five minutes. Dozens of other students witnessed the event as well.

The Air Force investigated the sighting shortly after it was reported. Officials contacted the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center to see if any unusual radar activity or aircraft had been in the area at the time. The center reported no knowledge of air traffic or radar returns that matched the sighting. Weather records showed a temperature inversion present over the area, a layer of warm air that can sometimes distort or reflect light from distant objects. However, the forecaster on duty was skeptical that an inversion had caused the phenomenon.

The Air Force's final evaluation appears in the case file as "probably jet aircraft with afterburner." The file notes that the object was moving too fast for a balloon and heading in the wrong direction for a satellite. Officials also observed that the sighting duration seemed excessive for a meteor. The case file shows no conclusive identification of what the object was. The full case file, 7 pages as held by the National Archives, is reproduced below.