Friday, June 14, 1996, resulted in the hottest day of the year
in Galicia (North-Western region of Spain). A temperature of 
C
was recorded in Santiago de Compostela the Galicia capital. Because of this
many people were in streets, parks, or country houses taking
fresh air at late hours. Sky was completely clear (almost New Moon)
and both the day and night were of an authentic summertime in spite of
not yet being astronomically related to this season of
the year. There were almost perfect conditions to see the night sky in
its entire splendor.
A bit before the local midnight at 
UTC,
an enormous and extremely bright object crossed the sky astonishing and
even preoccupying a lot of people who chanced to see the event.
A long trajectory and a long time interval during which the object
could be seen on the clear sky added more amazement and curiosity.
A journalist of a regional newspaper reported that some people in
a small village Cacheiras (a suburb of Santiago) being at these late
hours near a swimming-pool of their country house have seen
an extremely bright light that illuminated the ground all the place round.
This was the reason that from its very beginning the event became
known publicly as "Cacheiras' UFO".
In view of mass-media insistency, and anxious to learn more about
the nature of the phenomenon the Astronomical Observatory of the
University claimed that much more witnesses (including those from
relatively remote locations) and a very careful investigation of
the phenomenon had to be carried out in order to determine its
properties and the location of the possible impact site.
The collaboration with mass-media (usually interested in "UFO cases")
acted like a trigger, and was decisive for obtaining our observational
data. We received more than a hundred calls at the Astronomical
Observatory "Ramon Maria Aller" during just the first day after the news
was released. Among these witnesses there were not only inhabitants
of Santiago and its outskirts, but in some cases also people living
more than 100 km away from Santiago. All witnesses described the
phenomenon as something they never had seen before. They saw a huge
fireball (
half of the Moon size) with a striking tail
of different colors changing during the flight. It had a tube shape
being as bright as full Moon (or even brighter) with a little inclined
trail and with angular velocity slow enough to be well observed during
many seconds of the flight.
However, the most valuable and objective information has been provided
by a unique video tape casually recorded during the last 7.6 s of
the bright event.
Copyright The European Southern Observatory (ESO)