Hudson Valley

It moved silently above the Taconic, the size of a football field, and seven thousand people watched it.

For more than four years, beginning in late 1982, residents of the Hudson Valley reported a vast, silent, slowly-moving object — most often described as a triangular or boomerang-shaped array of brilliant lights — gliding low over the towns north of New York City. The peak night was March 24, 1983, when traffic stalled on the Taconic State Parkway as drivers stepped from their cars to watch it pass overhead.