{"id":68916,"date":"2016-09-18T23:11:50","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T05:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/aliens-over-la-plata-county-or-just-a-weather-balloon\/"},"modified":"2016-09-19T05:11:50","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T05:11:50","slug":"aliens-over-la-plata-county-or-just-a-weather-balloon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/aliens-over-la-plata-county-or-just-a-weather-balloon\/","title":{"rendered":"Aliens over La Plata County? Or just a weather balloon?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A NASA weather balloon had La Plata County residents on Saturday wondering if we truly are alone in the universe.<\/span>Courtesy of Catherine Gardner<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cI occasionally think how quickly our differences, worldwide, would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world,\u201d former President Ronald Regan told the United Nations in 1988.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, for some stargazers around La Plata County, the attainment of world peace spurred by alien invaders, appeared almost near.<\/p>\n

Posts to several local Facebook group pages erupted with speculation over a strange sighting in the sky: hot air balloons flying above the festival in Pagosa Springs, emissions of swamp gas, and even the coming of Michael the Archangel \u2013 all thrown into the mix as plausible explanations.<\/p>\n

But of course, the most widely favored theory was the spotting of an unidentified flying object.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a UFO,\u201d Durango resident Zach Arrow posted to the Durango, Ignacio, and Bayfield Area online Yard Sale group. \u201cThey\u2019re here to watch us.\u201d<\/p>\n

La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office Sgt. David Griggs told The Durango Herald on Sunday that residents were calling in the mysterious object, which was supposedly flashing red lights toward the Bayfield area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t really able to determine exactly what it was,\u201d Griggs said. \u201cWe had a captain run in here and say, \u2018Man, that thing has got to be a UFO.\u2019 Then it just disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Reagan\u2019s premonitions of world unification will have to wait. It was soon revealed that aliens had not arrived to take over the world.<\/p>\n

The object was eventually identified as a NASA weather balloon. Members from the NASA team were not available for comment Sunday.<\/p>\n

However, according to the mission\u2019s Twitter account, the X-Calibur weather balloon launched Saturday from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, with the goal to \u201cstudy astrophysics of black hole binaries, neutron stars, gamma ray bursts, & supermassive black holes and their jets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The X-Calibur traveled as far north as Nageezi, New Mexico, about an hour southeast of Farmington. At an elevation of 128,000 feet, the balloon was easily visible from Southwest Colorado, said Charlie Hakes, an assistant professor of physics and engineering at Fort Lewis College, and director of the Fort Lewis Observatory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s really clear and the sun hits them just right, it\u2019s easy to see them,\u201d Hakes said. \u201cThey stand out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The X-Calibur landed Sunday near the Arizona-New Mexico border, by the Arizona town of Springerville, after its 27-hour, 30-minute mission.<\/p>\n

Still, for some on Sunday, the jury was still out on just what exactly was spotted the sky.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy 3-year-old calls it the jellyfish balloon because of the color and \u2018arms,\u2019\u201d Bayfield resident Sara Trujillo posted to the Bayfield Online Yard Sale Facebook group.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

mission was studying black holes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,2582],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-research"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68916"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}