22 |Temple (1939 X) | The close approach of a comet sometimes causes a fantastic shower of “shooting stars,” and hundreds or even thousands may be counted in a single night. At the approach of the debris of Comet Biela on November 27, 1885, some 75,000 meteors were visible from a single place during a period of an hour. Irregularly occurring or sporadic meteors not associated with a known comet also occur and pelt the earth unexpectedly. _The Green Fireballs_ On the evening of September 18, 1954, a group of astronomers and their wives from the observatory at Sacramento Peak, New Mexico, were having a picnic at the White Sands National Monument, near Alamogordo. In this great desert of pure white gypsum the air is extremely hot during the daytime but cools to a pleasant warmth after sunset. Supper finished, the picnickers had taken off shoes and stockings to wade in the soft warm sand. By 8:30 it was dark and some of the astronomers had already left but others (including Dr. Menzel) had lingered to watch the stars, which stand out sharply in the clear skies over the desert. Suddenly, far to the north, appeared an enormous green fireball. Of blinding brilliance, it was moving slowly and majestically from east to west in a substantially horizontal path about seven degrees above the horizon, leaving behind a luminous trail that persisted for at least fifteen minutes. At about the same time thousands of other persons on the ground in New Mexico and Colorado, as well as the crews of several planes in flight, were observing the fireball. It passed over a crowded football stadium in Santa Fe, interfered with radio and TV transmission as it appeared over Albuquerque, and over Denver turned night into day. A United Airlines pilot at about 15,000 feet near Laramie, Wyoming, saw the blue-green ball crossing his course and for some ten minutes observed the luminous cloud it left behind[V-6]. At almost the same instant, the fireball was sighted in the Bay of San Francisco, 1000 miles away. One publication cited this meteor as two separate UFOs, one flying over San Francisco, the other over New Mexico and the Southwest[V-2]. When telephone calls swamped the newspaper offices, reporters interviewed Dr. Lincoln La Paz of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico. Although he had not observed this particular specimen, he had seen similar green fireballs a few years earlier and he commented that this was no ordinary meteor but something unusual. A new wave of UFO excitement began to sweep the country. Were mysterious machines from outer space again patrolling New Mexico?