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several days. Plagued by reporters, investigators, and curiosity seekers since the sighting, the Austins found the aftermath far from pleasant. Rigorous interrogation of the people who had seen the light left many doubts as to its exact nature. In the entire time it had pursued the car, Ronnie had not seen any kind of solid outline, only a kind of fuzzy brilliance. The night had been perfectly clear, and the night time temperature was an even 75 degrees. Although a few persons had reported some ground fog, Ronnie Austin said that he had seen none on his drive from Mount Vernon. Trooper Gidcumb, Marshal Sexton, and Deputy Lee all agreed that it was obvious that Ronnie had seen something, but they were emphatic in agreeing that the thing that they had been shown looked like an extremely bright star in the southeastern sky. Exactly what it was that Ronnie Austin led on a highway speed chase over the back roads of Southern Illinoise is still a mystery. Several possibilities - all theorizing that the light was rooted in natural phenomena - have been suggested. The brightest light in the heavens on August 5th, aside from the moon, was the planet Jupiter. And at about midnight, it was about 3 degrees above the horizon, a little south of east. Furthermore a distant object will appear to move parallel to a moving vehicle to an observer inside the vehicle. Yet, if the light were simply Jupiter, how could it change positions from one side of the car to the other, or disappear in the southeast, since Jupiter sets in the west? In some cases, light coming to the earth from stars or the moon is bent and magnified by pockets of air which vary in temperature. This is the so-called mirage. Even if the weather bureau would not have ruled this out, it would not have accounted for the light's ability to follow the car over all sorts of terrain. Another possibility is that the object was a lightning ball. Although this phenomenon is rare, the lightning ball is known to appear right after a rainstorm, in air which has been supercharged with static electricity. The weather around Fairfield had been hot and dry, and the night was clear. One of the few remaining possibilities is that the light was extra-terrestrial.