Canada reported unidentified aerial event — 1972-08-10 — Brooks, AB

Residents around Brooks and Patricia, Alberta, reported a bright moving object on the afternoon of 10 August 1972. The telex gives approximately 14:40 Mountain Daylight Time and a clear sky. Six observers were noted in Brooks and one in Patricia, with several individual names redacted in the recovered copy. A visiting Calgary witness reported to the detachment shortly afterward. Descriptions included a round or oval, yellowish-green form that appeared to be on fire, with a smoke or vapour trail visible for part of the observation. It moved high across the sky, approximately parallel to the ground, from southwest toward northeast. The initial telex estimates ten seconds at Brooks and twenty at Patricia. Those durations, shapes and colours are witness impressions rather than measured flight characteristics. Police contacted Suffield and Calgary air traffic control. The latter had received other reports but could not initially identify the cause. The written follow-up records news coverage attributing the regional spectacle to a meteor, an explanation the witnesses considered possible. Modern NASA material documents the exceptional daylight earthgrazer of that date; the local file’s earlier suggestion of a comet remnant was a contemporary claim, not an established composition analysis. No occupants or vehicle structure were described. The plate shows representative local observers and the luminous fireball with its trail, preserving the meteor context.