Springfield, OhioJuly 1960

On a Friday evening in July 1960, a 15-year-old boy in Springfield, Ohio was playing baseball in his front yard when a friend pointed out an unusual object in the sky. The boy immediately fetched his 40-power telescope and began observing. He watched the object for about 15 minutes as it moved slowly across the sky. Through his telescope, he described it as appearing roughly the size of a pinhead held at arm's length, which he estimated would make the actual object about 150 feet long and 75 feet wide. The object was bright enough to stand out against the evening sky, and the boy noted it had a solid, light metallic appearance.

As the boy continued to observe through his telescope, he saw what he believed were two small objects moving toward the larger one from the northeast. They appeared to pass behind the larger object without emerging on the other side. The boy watched until a small cloud drifted across the object's position. The cloud took about 50 seconds to pass, but when it cleared, the object had vanished. The boy did not see the object reappear from behind the cloud, nor did he see it pass in front of the moon.

The sighting went unreported for about two months. When the boy finally wrote to the Department of Defense in July 1960, more than a year had passed since the initial observation. His letter was forwarded to the Air Force's Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center, which asked him to complete a detailed questionnaire about what he had seen.

An Air Force analysis of the case determined that the object the boy observed was likely a near occultation of Gamma Virgo, a third-magnitude star (a star visible to the naked eye, positioned roughly 150 light-years from Earth). The bright star, when seen in conjunction with the moon, would have created an optical effect that matched the boy's description. The Air Force's conclusion, communicated in a September 1962 letter, noted that the star's position and brightness relative to moon activity accounted for what the boy had witnessed, and suggested he might enjoy reading astronomy texts to learn more about such phenomena.

The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives across 19 pages.