Reports of green fireballs have followed New Mexico since the 1940s. One winter-night sighting brings the mystery—and the state’s penchant for oddities—close to home.
No other cars shared the road as I drove I-25 south on a frigid January night in 2023. I fiddled with the heater, trying to clear the condensation from my windshield so I could better peer into the pitch-black desert between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Then the haunting opening notes of Blaze Foley’s “The Moonlight Song” came on the radio, prompting me to glance skyward—just as the light appeared.
Several miles above the horizon, an impossibly bright, lime-green orb materialized without warning, then plunged straight toward the earth, its brilliance resembling a rescue flare more than a shooting star. Years earlier, in Oregon, I had witnessed a green meteor—a bolide—streak across the night sky with a long, tapered tail. This was different: rounder, greener, and eerily vivid. It seemed less like something entering from space than an object already suspended over the desert before vanishing somewhere beyond Zia Pueblo… read more >
