Not until late October, nearly two months after the original incident, did the Air Force receive official notice of the mystery at Lubbock, and Captain Ruppelt of ATIC arrived to interview witnesses in Lubbock and the neighboring towns of Lamessa, Brownfield, and Big Spring. He quickly discovered that he had two mysteries to solve instead of one since, according to the witnesses who had started all the excitement, the objects shown in the pictures were wholly unlike the luminous phenomena observed by the three professors. The pictured lights formed a perfectly geometrical, flat V, while the original objects had formed a random pattern. Furthermore the pictures showed brilliant, sharply outlined lights as intense as unshaded electric bulbs, while the original objects had been softly glowing. Meanwhile the professors themselves had been trying to solve their own mystery. During September and October they had observed at least a dozen similar flights, and in an attempt to obtain the true altitude of the objects they had organized a field survey, operating in the country to achieve better seeing conditions. Two groups of observers were stationed at two different points, a measured distance apart, with radio communication between the two. By making simultaneous observations, they hoped to calculate the true height of the objects and thus obtain accurate estimates of size and speed. This well-planned experiment failed because the lights never appeared to the watchers in the country even on nights when they were clearly visible in the town. Nevertheless the scientists did establish one fact: the altitude could not be as high as 50,000 feet, their original estimate. An astronomer in the group, calculating from the few data available, showed that the height must have been only 2000 to 3000 feet, less than a tenth of the first estimate. Continuing his investigation, Captain Ruppelt found that other persons had seen the lights on the night of August 25--and identified them. At Brownfield, Texas, some thirty miles from Lubbock, a rancher and his wife had been sitting in their back yard when they noticed a group of fifteen to twenty lights flying overhead from north to south, silently, in no particular formation. They appeared to be very high and had “a kind of glow, a little bigger than a star.” Some time later a second group flew over. When a third group appeared, flying lower, he could see that they were birds; as they moved on to the south and one of the birds emitted a cry, he recognized the familiar call of the plover. Plover have a wing span of a foot and their oily white breasts form an excellent surface for reflecting the lights beneath them.