White Sands Clyde Tombaugh Sighting 1949

On August 20, 1949, Dr. Clyde Tombaugh — who had discovered the planet Pluto in 1930 and was working as an astronomer at White Sands Proving Ground — observed an unusual formation of luminous rectangular 'windows' moving at extreme speed across the sky over Las Cruces, New Mexico. Tombaugh observed the objects along with his wife and a neighbor. Tombaugh — one of the most accomplished observers in 20th-century astronomy, a man who had spent thousands of hours studying the night sky — stated publicly and on the record that he had never seen anything comparable and that he was 'not willing to attribute the phenomenon to a conventional cause.' Tombaugh filed a report with the USAF. His observation occurred during a period of intense activity at White Sands, which was testing captured German V-2 rockets and early American missile designs. The case remains one of the most significant UAP sightings by an internationally recognized scientific authority, comparable in scientific credibility to the Hessdalen instrument data.