Carl Hart Jr.

Carl Hart Jr. was an amateur photographer from Lubbock, Texas, and a Texas Tech freshman who, on August 30, 1951 (though some sources indicate August 31), used a 35mm camera from his parents' backyard to capture images of a V-shaped formation of luminous objects hovering over the city, an event that would become known as the Lubbock Lights.

Multiple witnesses, including three Texas Tech professors, had observed similar formations over several consecutive nights beginning August 25, 1951, with reports describing 18 to 20 white lights arranged in a V-formation, though the exact number varied by witness. Notably, the lights appeared brighter on film than they did to the naked eye.

After developing the photographs, Hart took them to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, where the editor purchased them for ten dollars. These images subsequently became internationally known and attracted the attention of Project Blue Book, with the Air Force and analysts including Edward Ruppelt examining the evidence, though the investigation was unable to conclusively identify the objects.

The Lubbock Lights case remains one of the earliest mass-witnessed and photographed UFO incidents, with hundreds of witnesses in the Lubbock area generating national publicity across the United States. Despite the Air Force suggesting birds with streetlight reflections as a probable cause, this explanation was not conclusively proven, and the phenomenon remains unexplained to this day.