Minnesota UFO Sightings
1965 Picture
1975 Picture
SUBJECT: LIGHT CLUSTERS IN DULUTH, MINN. SKY FILE: UFO841
Date: 13-Dec-86 14:23 MST
From: Executive News Svc.
Sighting DULUTH, Minn. (AP) -- A police officer says he and his partner "felt a little funny" reporting an unexplained cluster of lights in the night sky east of this northeastern Minnesota city. "We felt better after we heard we weren't the only ones seeing things," said officer Paul Stein after filing his "unidentified sighting" to police headquarters. In fact, numerous northern Minnesota residents reported seeing the lights around 1:25 a.m. Friday. In all, Duluth police reported nine sightings Friday morning of the object, which Stein described as a "cluster of white and yellow lights with a large conical fiery tail that split into three tails,then just vanished." But soon, the unidentified flying object had a probable identity: debris from a Soviet satellite re-entering the earth's atmosphere, according to a spokesman with the U.S. Space Command. "I figured they would come up with a scientific reason eventually," Stein said. "But I wish the suspense and romance of it all could have lasted a little longer." People as far away as Solon Springs, Wis., about 30 miles southeast of Duluth, and the Air National Guard in Fargo, N.D., also reported seeing the object. Stein said the object traveled in a horizontal direction for about 90 seconds. Police Lt. Beverly Ecklund said Stein's report was relayed to theNational Unidentified Flying Object Reporting Center in Seattle, aprivately operated center devoted to UFO research since 1973. But Stein said he doesn't doubt that what he saw was the satellite debris. The timing and location were too close for coincidence, he said. Del Kindschi, a spokesman for the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., confirmed that a piece of a Russian Soyuz T-11 satellite entered the atmosphere above northeastern Minnesota at the same time Stein reported seeing the object. "The debris entered the atmosphere over Lake Superior about 1:30 Friday morning and eventually disintegrated over eastern Pennsylvania," Kindschi said. The main satellite, launched in 1984, re-entered the atmosphere later that year, Kindschi said. Dave Teske, a planetarium assistant at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, said the object may have been part of a spectacular meteor shower called the Geminids which is streaking through the sky and should be visible through the weekend. Teske said Stein's description of how the tail split and then disappeared is consistent with a meteor burning up when it hits the Earth's atmosphere. "Very often the meteor explodes and the pieces blaze for a few seconds before they disintegrate," Teske said.