Astronomers and UFOs.

Another strange report from astronomers in Arkansas:

...The triangle shape was side ways pointing South with one light in the middle. It was about 5 degrees above the horizon, and clearly visible thru the sky glow of Fort Smith. At about 7:50 PM, the individual lights started to look like they were vibrating, then started flashing from red to white for about a minute.

At about 8:10 PM the objects blinked out and reappeared as a T-shape with 3 exactly distanced in a row with one directly below the center. At about 8:18 PM the objects blinked out and reappeared, except the bottom light was exactly between and below object one and two.

This object would slowly drift towards underneath object one, and when aligned would stop, then reverse course until it was under object number two and then reverse back again..

Link

reply to post by Arbitrageur



Arbitrageur - I don't know if you're aware of the work of Barry Greenwood but I suspect you might find it interesting -he's done a lot of great work investigating the UFO phenomenon and his book 'Clear intent' is probably one of the best ones I've read on the subject - here's what he has to say about the term 'UFO' at his archive website.

When the term "UFO" is used here, it is presented in the strictest definition. It does not mean space ship, extraterrestrial vehicle or the like. It means what it says: "unidentified flying object," something in the air that is not known with certainty. Probing such phenomena is not a silly pastime as has often been displayed in the media. Does one label another a "kook" or a "nut" when he/she observes transient weather phenomena that can't be immediately proven, like sun dogs, rainbows, ball lightning, or space phenomena like meteors or transient lunar flashes? Silliness springs forth when ill-grounded interpretation of these phenomena by assorted pundits from all walks of life comes into play.

Consequently we will not be dealing with enthused support of space brother messages, wild government conspiracies and alien invasions. If anything, we will be exceedingly critical of these issues. We feel that the injection of undisciplined rhetoric into discussions of UFOs have ruined a legitimate area of inquiry and created a very poor public image that will be difficult to remove.

Link

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Amateur astronomer observes large triangle with luminous rings in corners:

On February 2, 1990 a soundless flying triangle was observed near Hamburg, by the amateur astronomer Gutschke when he looked at the sky to observe the stars at 1:15 a.m. The 70 meters long triangle was surrounded by a luminous dust. In the three corners there were pinkish luminous rings. The altitude was approximately 300 meters. In about 8 seconds the triangle moved from the zenith to the horizon, in the direction of the city of Hamburg, where it vanished in the dust.

Link

Interesting quote by astrophysicist Bernard Haisch:

“A 1977 poll of American astronomers, published in JSE, showed the following. Out of 2611 questionnaires 1356 were returned. In response to whether the UFO problem deserved further study the replies were: 23% certainly, 30% probably, 27% percent possibly, 17% probably not, 3% certainly not. Interestingly, there was a positive correlation between the amount of reading done on the subject and the opinion that further study was in order…”

Bernard Haisch Bio

Dr James Mcdonald - UFO Symposium 1968.

WHY DON'T ASTRONOMERS EVER SEE UFO'S?

I have had this question put to me by many persons, including a number of astronomers. Once I was speaking to a group from an important laboratory of astronomy when the director asked why astronomers never see them. In the room, among his staff, were two astronomers who had seen unconventional objects while doing observing but who had asked that the information they had given me about their sightings be kept confidential. I understand such strictures, but some of them make things a bit difficult. This phenomenon of professional persons seeing unidentified objects and then being extremely loath to admit it is far more common than one might guess.

..Returning, however, to the question of why astronomers never see UFOs, a relevant quantitative consideration needs to be cited at once. According to a recent count, the membership of the American Astronomical Society is about 1800; by contrast, our country has about 350,000 law-enforcement officers. With almost 200 times as many police, sheriffs' deputies, state troopers, etc., as there are professional astronomers, it is no surprise that many more UFO reports come from the law-enforcement officers than from the astronomers. Furthermore, the notion that astronomers spend most of their time scanning the skies is quite incorrect; the average patrolman almost certainly does more random looking about than the average professional astronomer.

Despite these considerations, there are on record many sightings from astronomers, particularly the amateurs, who far outnumber the professionals. A few examples will be considered.

Link

Sightings by Astronomers

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Case 20 Las Cruces, N.M., August 20, 1949 59
Case 21 Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, July 10, 1947 60
Case 22 Harborside, Me., July 8, 1947 60
Case 23 Ogra, Latvia, July 26, 1965 60
Case 24 Kislovodsk, Caucasus, August 8, 1967 61
Case 25 Flagstaff, Ariz., May 20, 1950 61

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Sightings by Meteorologists

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Case 26 Richmond, Va., April 1947 62
Case 27 Yuma, Ariz., February 4, 1953 62
Case 28 Upington, Cape Province, December 7, 1954 63
Case 29 Arrey, New Mexico, April 24, 1949 63
Case 30 Admiralty Bay, Antarctica, March 16, 1961

Link

It's more difficult for astronomers to spot UFO's than is generally realised. Professional astronomers rarely look at the sky and spend their working life sitting at computers. Amateurs on the other hand when looking through their telescopes have incredibly small fields of view.

I'm an amateur myself and have spotted two strange things in the sky. The first was in the late 70s and was a short thin red line almost directly above and was totally stationary for about 10 minutes. It looked exactly like a laser beam, but had clearly defined start and end points. Unfortunately, I wasn't watching when it disappeared. That one I retrospectively put down to possible early 'Star Wars' testing in the upper atmosphere. I spotted it because I looked up as it was a very clear sky that night.

The second I can find no explanation for so it is truly a UFO! It was in the early nineties and was the subject of my first thread which you can look up here if you wish. Thread

My point is that neither sighting was through a telescope. Both were me looking at the sky with nothing but my eyesight. The only advantage that astronomers have in spotting UFO's is that we glance up at the sky whenever it is clear - we just can't help ourselves! But anyone spending hours at the scope is unlikely to spot a UFO.

[edit on 27/3/10 by Insomniac]

reply to post by Insomniac


Insomniac, thanks for sharing your account(s) and you do make an interesting point about professional astronomers not necessarily looking up at the sky all the time due to computer screens - there's a good website below which collates UAP reports from astronomers and its goals are pretty admirable.

Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (UAP) Observations Reporting Scheme

Goals:

I. Facilitate and enable the reporting of UAP sightings and collection of related instrumental records from the Astronomical community, through questionnaires to be downloaded from a dedicated web site:

◦Approach the UAP controversial field from a professional, rational, scientific approach and without any a priori.

◦Simulate, as from 2009 and in the framework of the Internal Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), the submission of UAP reports that would have otherwise little chance to surface, encouraging witnesses to come forward with testimonies. We hope to greatly reduce individuals’ reluctance of reporting a UAP sighting, reluctance based either on the assumption that no one will believe them, the fear of ridicule, or that nothing will be done with such reports.

◦Contribute towards the collection of instrumental and photographic records of unidentified phenomenon. Many IYA2009 observers will be equipped with technical equipment (telescopes, video-cameras, cameras with spectrographs), which creates an excellent opportunity to obtain supplementary non-narrative data.

Link

Cheers.

Awesome episode by Brian Cox tonight! I seriously suggest people catch it whilst you can on BBC iPlayer "Wonders of the Solar System" for the best and final episode. I love it when he's naturally stunned by the microbal life in ice. Makes you wonder about the true size of our universe

And that tether video

And for everyone going mental about that BBC advert of ghost alien lady checking Obama out then you'll enjoy the ending to this episode.

He uses the term "smoking gun" and rightly so. When I was a kid there was no mention of water on Mars, etc - now imagine how well that will educate the younger ones these days, and broaden their perspective. After they've completed San Andreas.

And for the record the Jupiter moon he talks about seems incredibly sexy. Why am I attracted to a planet? Also, is it me or is Mars like some kind of sandbox planet, literally, and in a Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 kind of sense.

And PS 4-4-2010...a nice date i woz ere


[edit on 4-4-2010 by markymint]

reply to post by karl 12


Karl 12.....

I'm just curious.....

Did you end up with any thoughts regarding Jakman's video & thread as per my post on P1?

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

reply to post by Maybe...maybe not


Hey bud -I have no idea what the footage shows on the thread although I do think Ngchunter makes some fair points (as does Jakman) -I'm certainly no expert when it comes to astronomical camera anomalies (hence the lack of input) but I do suspect there's a terrestrial explanation for this one.

Sorry for being a bit vague.

Cheers.

I personally believe most astronomers dont report sightings of ufo's incase it goes against there credetials.
Sir Patrick Moore has always stated that he hasnt seen ufo's whether hes telling the truth or not is anyones guess.

Another way to look at it too is when astronomers are looking through the telescope they are only seeing a very small portion of the sky.
For a ufo to cross that field of vision i think would be very few and far between.

I didn't want to butt because not everyone appreciates my controversial opinions, but why not this is an open forum and I have 2 cents to add.

Astronomers are the worst people to criticize for their sometimes negative views on UFOs. They are the least qualified to speak with about UFOs. They are not your average person who's out there craning their necks looking at the sky. They observe mostly deep space through instruments that offer them extremely restrictive views. Or they're sitting in rooms which only offer views on computer-type screens resulting from the views provided by extremely-restrictive telescopes.

They're not like you and I who may sit outside day and night and hunt for UFOs with the wide angle view provided by our naked eyes. Usually we'll have binoculars or telescopes and/or digital cameras hoping to catch an elusive UFO. Astronomers are not looking at our atmosphere, they're looking thru it to far away vistas.

Let's say that a UFO crosses the optical path of an astronomer's telescope. Unless the UFO is drifting, it will cross the restricted optical path and even if the astronomer was looking through the telescope, it should be out of focus because astronomers' telescopes are focused millions of light years away.

On and on, if you think about it you can add to these problems. Astronomers should not be singled out for their views on UFOs unless they are well read and are familiar with the subject. But as far as astronomers and UFOs while they're at work, it doesn't work.

Thanks for the replies and I agree, many astronomers may not have the opportunity, time or inclination to witness or submit UFO sightings but it doesn't stop there being quite a few reports.

There's a good NICAP link here which deals with UFO reports from scientists, engineers, astronomers etc.. and contains this interesting one from Darling Observatory Curator Franks Halstead:

Frank Halstead

Former Curator of Darling Observatory,

University of Minnesota

Mr. Halstead and his wife saw two UFOs while crossing the Mojave Desert on a Union Pacific train in 1955. He reported the experience to NICAP Board Member, Frank Edwards:

"It was the first day of November, 1955. We were on our way to California - about 100 miles west of Las Vegas when it happened. My wife Ann was sitting next to the window and she called my attention to an object which she saw - something moving just above the mountain range. Our train was running parallel to this range of mountains and this object was moving in the same direction as the train, just above the mountains. I first thought the thing was a blimp. . . But as I watched it I realized that it could not be a blimp - they are only about 200 feet long. And this thing was gigantic. It was about 800 feet long. I could estimate that because it was so close to the mountain ridge where trees and clumps of trees were visible for comparison.

While we were watching the cigar-shaped thing, for four or five minutes as it paced the train, we noticed that another object had joined it. This second object appeared very suddenly in back of the first one. It was a disc-shaped thing. Both of them were very shiny, we noticed. . . If my estimate of size on the cigar-shaped thing was correct then the disc-shaped object would have been about 100 feet in diameter, flat on the bottom with a shallow dome on top.

My wife and I watched them for another two or three minutes. They were moving at about the same speed as the train and they were very close to the top of the ridge, not more than 500 feet above it, I should say. Then they began to rise, slowly at first and then much faster. In a matter of seconds they had risen so high that we couldn't see them any more from the train window.

All over the world credible witnesses are reporting experiences similar to mine. Holding these people up to ridicule does not alter the existing facts. The time is long overdue for accepting the presence of these things, whatever they are and dealing with them and the public on a basis of realism."

The NICAP UFO Evidence Report

Cheers.

I am an amateur astronomer ( I have a couple of scopes a ASGT-C6 celestron. a Nexstar SE6, a William Optics 66mm SD) and i too believe in UFO's , i have seen a couple , the problem when an amatur astronomer looking on the eyepice of a telescope is this:

The field is very narrow actually you are looking just a very small part of the night sky around 1 degree or 2 at most!!, so for seeing and UFO this ufo have to appear on that exact spot and thats i supouse damm hard! people thinks that meteor showers are better look on telescopes, sorry folks but if you want to see a ufo or a meteor shower its better use your own naked two eyes! your eyes have wide angle vision instead of a narrow field of a telescope!.

Another thing is that most of us amauteurs use Go to scopes to find the things, a data base in hand controll that moves the scope to it and follows it all the night long after a very easy star aligment, we use that because trying to find some nebulas, star cluster or some galaxys is hard without any guides! some people prefer the old method of finding things but Go to technology gives instant gratification.

Like i said i believe in UFO and ET life, and i am a amateur astronomer. Maybe the big observatories around the world controll the info of what they see but on the amateur astornomy they cant controll the millions who have a telescope for the fun of watching the nightsky.

If you want to see a ufo you should at leats buy a pair of binos around 50mm, at least with that you can star trying to find some faint fussies (we amateurs call that star clusters, nebulas and galaxys because they look like that) and because binos are easy and faster if you see something with your naked eye strange then use the binos to look it more close. I would recomend a binos around that size 50mm with powers around 10X to 30mm (if it haz zoom much better).

reply to post by AlexDJ


AlexDJ, some sound advice there mate.

Here's an interesting one filmed by amateur astronomer Chuck Clark during rocket launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base.




Cheers.

reply to post by karl 12


Hey just seeing this now. Thanks for the excellent thread karl12!

Here is another astronomer who claimed to have seen a UFO:

Horst and I were there in the daylight waiting for it to get dark.

It was our turn to show the public around the evening sky as members of the Peoria Astronomical Society.

It was not the kind of night we expected to see a UFO.

But, then, is there such a thing as a time you expect to see a UFO in North Peoria?

We were watching the storm when a dark moving shape appeared in the peripheral vision of my left eye.

Two intelligent individuals with a keen interest in watching the stars. Yet here is yet more proof of why the stigma of the 'ufo' is so damaging to ufology itself:

He smiled.

“I’m glad you were here,” he said.

“If I had seen this alone, I wouldn’t have said a word about it to anyone.”

Source

Greetings to all on ATS.
I was just looking at an interactive image of the Orion Nebula taken by the Hubble and realised I may need some assistance in identifying a certain something I came across.
I've posted the link to this image below:

home.exetel.com.au...

To locate the object just place your cursor at the center of the image and slowly scroll up to magnify...the object should be slightly to the right of the cursor or there about.

Your input would be much appreciated , Cheers!

reply to post by Scramjet76


Scramjet, thanks for the post mate and that's certainly another intriguing report you've posted there - I also agree with your comments about the phrase 'UFO' - Terry Hansen makes some interesting points in this clip about the negative stigma attached to it:

The Robertson panel - UFOs and ridicule

Cheers.

reply to post by emgee
I can see why you might think that looks like a UFO, but astronomers have identified it as a protoplanetary disk, see here:
hubblesite.org...

Click to start the tour and then click the protoplanetary disks link and the object shown is about where you said to look so I think that's it, right?

Not a UFO but maybe a baby picture of what our solar system looked like in its infancy, quite interesting!

One astronomer-UFO case was cited as

Case 24 Kislovodsk, Caucasus, August 8, 1967 61

..but that case has been investigated and solved.

Are there any working search engines that could bring a curious reader to the solution?

as an experiment, let's try to find it.