UFOMYST
CaseCircle2009

Surprise, AZ, USA

Large, stat., bright light in sky at 19:30 nw from Surprise, AZ ((NUFORC Note: Confirmed high-altitude research balloon. PD))

Report quality: Low29/100

This score reflects report-quality signals on file — how complete, corroborated, and precisely located the report is — not a claim about whether the sighting was a real craft.

  • No parseable duration on file
  • Moderate witness text (63 characters)
  • Location geocoded exactly
  • No other reports from this city within 3 days
  • NUFORC attached a skeptical explanation note (e.g. Venus, satellite, meteor)
When
2009-05-18
Where
Surprise, AZ, USA
Shape
Circle
Duration
to present
Geo
33.631, -112.333 · exact
Slug
circle-over-surprise-az-2009-1b1281
Wave

Part of a wave

  • Historical wave2004

    The Navy Encounters & the UAP Era

    U.S. training ranges (Pacific off San Diego; Atlantic off Virginia), then worldwide reporting

    The wave that renamed the subject. The USS Nimitz 'Tic Tac' encounter (November 2004: radar drops from 80,000 ft to sea level in seconds, pilot visual by Cmdr. David Fravor, FLIR video) stayed classified-adjacent until…

    Open wave →

In context

  • Surprise, AZ shows up 80 times across the archive.
  • 161 reports came from Arizona in 2009.
  • In the 2000s, 8.9% of reports described a circle — the all-time rate is 10.6%.

Nearby in space & time

within 30 days

Report

Full narrative lands with dossier import for famous cases, or the NUFORC free-text summary above for standard reports. This shell is SSR-ready: one D1 row (including connections_json) per page.