Argentina: The LUCI Phenomenon (03. Yo Fui Testigo)

 

 

Sᴏᴜʀᴄᴇ: FAO-ICOU
Dᴀᴛᴇ: 04.22.2022
3. Yᴏ Fᴜɪ Tᴇsᴛɪɢᴏ - Tʜᴇ LUCI Pʜᴇɴᴏᴍᴇɴᴏɴ
(A ᴘʀᴇsᴇɴᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ʙʏ Dᴇᴍᴇᴛʀɪᴏ Cʜᴀʀᴀʟᴀᴍʙᴏᴜs)

 "Dear friends, I hope you are well. How would you like it if we discussed the LUCI phenomenon? Many of you are aware of it. It is that pulsating light that appears in the night skies and gives little explanation.

 "I have seen LUCI more than a dozen times. I would like to tell you about only three of these sightings. Those were the ones that impressed me most. The first time was three years ago. I was on my way back home from a recital I'd attended at La Lucila Beach, and I walked home, a distance of some three kilometers. [The time] was around eleven o'clock at night, and I saw a pulsating light facing me, among the stars, near the Centaurus constellation (*), a light that appeared and disappeared. It moved a little in a certain direction and then reappeared at a nearby spot, unaligned with the trajectory it had been following - exactly the same as a firefly. It danced in the stratosphere.

 "I witnessed easily twenty such pulses, all of them random. In no case did it follow a single direction. It dawned on me that this could not be a satellite - a satellite always follows a trajectory, and this thing did not. It glowed at a given point, and then glowed again further behind in its path, with regard to the path it had been following, or off to one side. It shined, came and went, much like a firefly.

 "This merited giving it the name LUCI, because in this instance it behaved like a cosmic luciérnaga (firefly, in Spanish). What's most interesting is that I mentioned this to Luis [Burgos] on Facebook that very same evening, as soon as I got home, and he had other eyewitness accounts from those who had seen LUCI at the same time I'd seen it. People who were many kilometers distant from the place I'd seen it. I was in La Lucía, on the Argentine Atlantic Coast, and at the same time there were people who had seen it from Palermo, and others had seen it in La Gruta, Rio Negro, at the same time. This went to prove that those pulses of light take place high in the atmosphere, in the stratosphere, at the height of satellites. Had it been an airplane, it would not have been visible to individuals separated by a thousand or twelve hundred kilometers. The distance between Palermo, Buenos Aires and La Gruta is 1200 kilometers, or a thousand kilometers in a straight line.

 "Therefore that [object] was operating at the elevation of satellites, in the first place. Second, it couldn't be a satellite because it didn't follow a trajectory, and therefore, it was something that mimicked the behavior of a satellite, but did not imitate its movements. It was something unknown. This I understood from the first time, and well, Luis told me that many others had also seen it around 1980. It remains a phenomenon for which there are still no answers.

 "The second time I saw LUCI was a year ago, on January 25, and on this occasion it behaved differently. I realized it was LUCI because it pulsed and vanished completely, but not in the way we understand the titillation of airliner navigation lights, where one sees the airplane, or an object, and then a fixed light and another that twinkles. No, no. This was a light with the aspect of a satellite, pulsating and vanishing altogether. It pulsated once again, and on this occasion, it crossed the skies, following a straight line, pulsating. I did not want to count the pulsations because they were so many - I estimated between forty and sixty pulsations. It was like watching a train in the sky...but not the StarLink train, of which I am well aware. It's a lovely sight to see, yes, but this had nothing to do with it, because this phenomenon pulsated and then disappeared, and had no company at all. It was the only light in the sky.

 "This time I enjoyed it. I knew I was watching LUCI and it was truly a marvelous sight. It was very different from the first time. If had seen this the first time around, I would have thought it to be a satellite that turned itself on and off, although we know that satellites are so far away that should they turn lights on and off, we wouldn't see them. What we are seeing is the reflection of the sun's light against the object, and it can therefore not pulsate in such a way.

 "And the third time was about a year ago. The second time, I now realize, was two years ago, in the summer. The third time was exactly a year ago. I'd flown to Iceland and the date was February 14, on the anniversary of that initial sighting. And I think Luis had organized a skywatch that evening. It seems that LUCI likes to turn up whenever the FAO holds one of its skywatches. But I was at the other end of the world, near the Arctic Circle, and I stepped outside to see the stars, and I was really hoping to see the Aurora Borealis, which I eventually managed to see days later, as part of a tour that took me to where it could indeed be seen.

 "But that evening I got up out of my hotel - out of bed, really - in the middle of the night to see if it was possible to see the aurora. But what I saw at that time wasn't the aurora. I saw some stars that were unknown to me - the skies over the Arctic Circle were very strange to me, because Orion's belt - and indeed, all of the Orion Constellation - was flush with the horizon. The southern horizon, I don't mean that it was rising...up to that point I was familiar with the constellations, there might have been another beside it that was familiar, so the upper third of the heavens were filled with unknown stars, because the Arctic Circle has stars that cannot be seen here. So I was amazed, looking up at that unknown sky. Then LUCI showed up. It began pulsating, and it honestly stunned me.

 "To me it was a phenomenon exclusive to the Southern Hemisphere, and always close to Argentina. But here I was, at the opposite end of the world, and LUCI turns up, pulsating. Three or four times, no mistaking it. Remember I'd already seen it a few times earlier, fourteen or fifteen times. It pulsated three or four times and then on the fifth, it did something very odd, which I did not understand, as it took a fraction of a second. It was as if the light had split into two or three lights, but only for a split second. I was disconcerted, not knowing if it had doubled back - it had been following a given heading - and suddenly, it glowed at that point and *also* at the point behind. So it had doubled back, and then made a sixth pulsation farther ahead along the course it had been following. I was very disconcerted, and it never appeared again.

 "The odd thing is that back here in Argentina - as I'd learned from the Facebook page - it had also been seen. In other words, LUCI glowed in two separate locations, two different hemispheres, in a single night. LUCI does as she pleases.

 "I also wanted to remark that there are some photos taken by Lucía López which show this splitting into different lights. A photo showing three small lights instead of a single one, and this is what I saw. During one of its pulsations - which were single pulses - it split in three, really. Two or three smaller lights for a split second. Well, this is the story I wanted to share with you, and as you can see, these were three very different sightings of LUCI, even one in a different part of the world. We believed it to be a phenomenon exclusive to Argentina, but it has since been seen and photographed in Chile, the first recording by Lucía López was here in Buenos Aires, and I have seen footage from the United States of an object that behaved exactly the same way.

 "Therefore, LUCI appears to be a phenomenon initially recorded in Argentina, where it was given a name, and now it’s as though it appears at other latitudes of the planet. This is definitely not the last word on this mystery, and what I've told you here is merely another grain of sand contributed to this enigma. Thank you for listening to me. Be well."

 (*) Constellation only visible in the Southern Hemisphere

 [Transcription and translation © 2022 Scott Corrales, IHU with thanks to Luis Burgos]