Greetings, Earthlings! (Sorry. I have to say that. It's the law.)

My name is Kevin and I live in Tucson, Arizona. By day I'm a regular guy with a regular job. By night I'm out in the desert east of town with my 8-inch Dobsonian telescope, a thermos of coffee, a red flashlight and a spiral notebook, watching the sky. Southern Arizona has some of the darkest, clearest skies in the whole country, which is great for looking at galaxies and nebulas... and even better for spotting things that aren't supposed to be there.

Now, most of what I see up there has a perfectly normal explanation, and when it does, I'll be the first one to tell you. (Scroll down and you'll see I've been fooled by the planet Venus. Yes, really.) But every once in a while something goes over that I just can't figure out. Those are the ones that keep me driving out there on Saturday nights.

The monsoon storms are finally winding down for the year, so the skies are clearing up and I'm back out there every weekend. If you see something weird, tell me about it!

Here's every sighting I've logged since I started keeping track in 1997. I put in ALL of them, even the embarrassing ones. If you want people to take you seriously, you have to be honest about the times you got fooled. Times are Arizona time. (We don't do daylight saving time out here, which makes it easy.)

"The Spot" = my favorite observing spot, a pull-off in the desert east of town, out toward the Rincon Mountains, where the city glow finally fades out.

If you live in Arizona, you already know about this one. That night, thousands of people reported strange lights in the sky over a stretch of about 300 miles, from up near the Nevada line, down over Phoenix, all the way to the edge of Tucson. A lot of folks described a gigantic V-shape (some say a boomerang) of lights moving slowly and silently overhead, big enough to block out the stars behind it.

Later that same night, around 10 o'clock, a row of glowing orange lights hung in the sky southwest of Phoenix. The official answer is that those were flares dropped by A-10 jets during a training exercise out on the Barry Goldwater Range. OK, fine. Maybe that explains the lights at 10 o'clock. It doesn't explain the V that people watched moving across half the state earlier in the evening.

And where was your faithful skywatcher that night? In my backyard with a pair of binoculars, looking at Comet Hale-Bopp like half of Arizona, about 100 miles south of all the action. Pointed the wrong way. I will never, ever get over it.

Did YOU see the Phoenix Lights? I would love to hear your story. E-mail me and tell me what you saw, where you were standing and what time it was.

So you saw something. Great! Now DON'T PANIC, and don't wait until morning to write it down. Your memory WILL play tricks on you, trust me. Grab a pen and get down as much of this as you can:

1. The time. Look at your watch right away. When did it start? When did it end?
2. Where you are. The exact spot you were standing (or driving).
3. Direction. Which way were you looking? North, northeast, east...? If you don't know, remember where the sun went down. That's west-ish.
4. Elevation. How high above the horizon was it? Hold your fist out at arm's length. One fist is about 10 degrees. From the horizon to straight overhead is 90 degrees, or 9 fists.
5. Color and brightness. Compare it to things you know: "brighter than any star," "about like an airplane light," "dim, barely there."
6. Movement. Did it move? Straight line or zig-zag? Fast or slow? Did it blink, flash, pulse or change color? Did it stop?
7. Sound. Humming, engines, nothing at all? No sound is important too. Write it down.
8. Size. Compare it to the full Moon. (The Moon is only half a degree across, smaller than you think. Your pinky at arm's length covers it.)
9. The weather. Clear or cloudy? Windy? Hazy? Any lightning off in the distance? Out here, a monsoon storm can light up clouds 50 miles away.
10. Witnesses. Who else saw it? Have them write down THEIR version before you compare notes.
11. Sketch it. Even a bad drawing is better than no drawing.

Then send it to me at [email protected] and I'll help you figure out what it was (or wasn't). If it's a good one, and you say it's OK, I'll put it up on this page.

Planets. Venus is the #1 UFO of all time. After the Sun and the Moon it's the brightest natural thing in the sky, and when it's low near the horizon the air makes it twinkle and flash colors and it seems to "hover" forever. Jupiter fools people too. This fall Jupiter is coming up in the east in the evenings, super bright, with Saturn not far behind it. If a light doesn't move for an hour except to slowly rise or set along with the stars, it's a planet or a star.

Stars low on the horizon. Same deal. In the winter, Sirius coming up in the southeast flashes red, blue and green like a police car. That's just the atmosphere bending the light.

Iridium flares. There are 66 Iridium satellites up there now (they're for satellite phones), and each one has flat, shiny antennas about the size of a door. When one catches the sun just right, you see a "star" brighten up for a few seconds, sometimes a lot brighter than Venus, and then fade away. Freaky the first time!

Satellites. A steady dot, no blinking, gliding smoothly across the sky in a few minutes. You see them best an hour or two after sunset or before sunrise, when it's dark down here but they're still up in the sunlight. Sometimes one fades out right in the middle of the sky when it goes into the Earth's shadow. Mir is easy to spot, and you can even catch the first pieces of the new International Space Station going over.

Meteors. "Shooting stars" are bits of space dust burning up. They're over in a second or two. The big ones (fireballs) can be green or orange, leave a trail, and even break into pieces. Mark your calendar for the Leonids in the middle of November. Some astronomers think we could get a real meteor STORM this year!

Aircraft. Blinking red and green lights and white strobes = airplane. Landing lights are the tricky part. A plane coming more or less straight at you with its landing lights on looks like a bright light hanging still in the sky for minutes. Between the air base and the airport, Tucson has plenty of these.

Balloons. The National Weather Service sends up weather balloons twice a day, every day, and they go up really high. Around sunset they catch sunlight long after the ground is dark and shine like a silver star. Also: shiny Mylar party balloons that got away. Don't laugh. They fool people all the time.

Other stuff. Searchlights on the clouds (car dealers love these), kites with lights on them, birds lit up by street lights, and your own reflection in the window. Always check the window.

Sunday nights at my house are X-Files nights. The phone goes unanswered, the lights go off, and nobody talks until the credits roll. I've been watching Mulder and Scully since the very first season back in 1993, when it was still on Friday nights and I had the VCR set every time I went out skywatching.

Last season ended with Scully finding a SPACESHIP on a beach in Africa, and they left us hanging all summer long. Word is the new season doesn't start until November. NOVEMBER!!

Favorite episode ever: "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" from season 3. Funniest UFO story ever made, and to be honest, it's kind of about people like me.

Mulder's poster says it best: I WANT TO BELIEVE. Me too. I'm just going to check where Venus is first.

• The Area51 Neighborhood - more space, sci-fi and strange-stuff pages from my neighbors here in Area51.
• Mr. Delgado's 7th Grade Science - if you've got kids who like science, send them here. I wish I'd had a teacher like this.
• Brian's PC Help Page - Brian's tips got my 56K modem to stop dropping the connection. Thanks, Brian!
• Backyard Birds of Wisconsin - Walt and June look up at the sky too, just in the daytime.
• The Henderson Family Home Page - Bob and Linda run the WebRing this page belongs to. Nice folks!
• All the GeoCities.us Neighborhoods