SIGHTING: MARICOPA, ARIZONA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"On the evening of September 14, 2011 (the evening a fireball was seen from San Diego, CA, Las Vegas Nevada to Arizona & New Mexico) I was sitting out in the back yard talking with my two sons. I was facing south/west and my two sons were in front facing me on opposite sides of the porch. As we were talking I noticed behind my son who was on my right in front and facing me a very large and bright glowing green light through the tree that was on the west side of the yard. As I talked I watched it getting closer and as it came in view past the tree I saw that it was an extremely bright green ball of light. I immediately stood up and at the same time pointed and said "look at that!" and both my sons looked and saw the same thing I was seeing. As we watched, it was going parallel to the ground at what looked to be about the height of the two story house across the road or maybe a bit higher. We watched it til it was at about to the half way point of my son's brick fence which faces south and we could see it was a ball shape, brilliant green, with what I can only describe as golden sparklers coming out the back end of the "fireball" (right side.) You could clearly see the sparks. There was no sound, and no smell, however, I heard a soft hissing sound for about 1 second which abruptly stopped at the same time it suddenly and instantly disappeared right in front of our eyes. I'm trying to think how to describe how big this object was and the best I can come up with without knowing what it's actual size and how far away it was for sure is this green fireball looked about the size of a baseball held in your hand at arms length toward the sky. It was that close and that big. To me it seemed awfully slow for a meteorite and it was going straight across from West to East parallel to the ground instead of falling or on an angle. It looked to me to be within a block or so of the house, but one of my son's says he thought it was more like about a mile away. It's hard to tell for sure when you don't know the size of the object. My first thought when I was watching it come towards me was that someone had shot a huge fourth of July rocket straight down the street behind my son's house. It was definitely very close, or very huge, to see it the size we saw it. This was seen from the town of Maricopa, AZ at somewhere around 7:45pm. I didn't think to look at my watch. I saw it for maybe 10-15 seconds, seemed longer though, and my sons for less than that amount of time. It almost seemed in slow motion to me. You could actually see the golden colored sparks flashing like a sparkler behind it, the rest was a brilliant green ball with possibly a bit of blue. Very exciting to see! Fantastic experience for sure!"