Morehead, KentuckyJanuary 1962

On the evening of January 28, 1962, an 18-year-old college student and amateur astronomer in Morehead, Kentucky, stepped into his backyard to observe constellations through binoculars. Around 9:55 p.m., while looking up at the night sky, he noticed a glowing light moving steadily westward almost directly overhead. When he trained his binoculars on it, he saw not one object but between 8 and 12 of them. Each had a distinctive V-shape with a vertex angle of about 130 degrees. They glowed with a bright but not brilliant white light, and he could make out their outlines clearly. He heard no sound and saw no trail behind them.

The objects flew close together but in no perfect formation. One of them, positioned slightly behind and to the right of the group, moved over to the left side as the cluster proceeded westward. The student watched them travel across about 45 degrees of sky before they vanished above the western horizon. The entire sighting lasted about 8 seconds. He returned inside to tell his parents, then called a friend. When his friend arrived, the student showed him the path he had plotted on a star map and answered his questions about what he had seen. The friend later wrote that he had known the student since childhood and considered him serious, intelligent, and level-headed, and believed absolutely in the truth of his account.

Air Force investigators checked several possibilities. A local professor at Morehead State College, who was a birdwatcher, suggested the objects might have been birds but was uncertain. The case file notes that a streetlight about 120 feet away to the southwest could have reflected off birds flying at low altitude. At that altitude, 8 seconds to traverse 45 degrees of sky is consistent with birds flying at about 30 to 35 miles per hour. However, the Air Force concluded in its formal evaluation that the objects were "probably birds," though some uncertainty remained since the witness did not identify them as such at the time. The full case file, containing 7 pages as preserved by the National Archives, is reproduced below.