The Betty Hill Starmap - New insight

Originally posted by weedwhacker
I would HOPE that the beings who answered Betty's question showed her a view BASED on the perspective as viewed from Earth...

I think rather that the map she was shown (allegedly) was not from an earthly point of view.

From earth, we cannot see those stars aligned in that way. From where it is supposed to be, it is a possibility.

Wonderful post: Factual, well presented, and conclusions logically follow from the facts presented. I will strive to emulate your example in future posts of my own.

I do have a question though. Does anyone know if Zeta 1 and 2 Reticuli stars have any planets identified so far?

I believe there are now something like 340 extrasolar planets currently identified (see this link with info as of about 3 weeks ago, and it also describes the system used for naming extrasolar planets: Extrasolar Planets

Discovery of a planet in Zeta Reticuli would be a huge supporter of this star map.

reply to post by Sashromi

Discovery of a planet in Zeta Reticuli would be a huge supporter of this star map.

Yea there was one discovered in 2001(HD23079B),and it appears capable of supporting life.............here is the link.............home.xtra.co.nz...

[edit on 4/13/2009 by jkrog08]

Originally posted by Sashromi
I do have a question though. Does anyone know if Zeta 1 and 2 Reticuli stars have any planets identified so far?

Discovery of a planet in Zeta Reticuli would be a huge supporter of this star map.

According to the Wikipedia page a Hot Jupiter type planet was reported to have been discovered in the system in 1996 only to be retracted shortly afterwards.

As I understand it, the abscence of a Hot Jupiter may actually bode well for the chances of a habitable planet in the system so this should not be seen as discouraging.

*********See my last post about the discovery of a planet in the Zeta system*****

This boads very well towards 'proof'.

Originally posted by jkrog08
*********See my last post about the discovery of a planet in the Zeta system*****

This boads very well towards 'proof'.

The link you give is for HD 23079 B, a planet orbiting HD 23079 which is a star in the Reticulum constellation. At approximately 114 light years from Sol it is considerably further away from us than Zeta Reticuli is.

reply to post by sonicology


Correct,but Bettys map contained multiple stars in the "constellation".Knowing that the Zeta prime star is only 39.5 ly away,and this one around 114 sure keeps it within the star map,does it not?

Originally posted by jkrog08

Correct,but Bettys map contained multiple stars in the "constellation".Knowing that the Zeta prime star is only 39.5 ly away,and this one around 114 sure keeps it within the star map,does it not?

To be honest, no.

It [HD 23079] is considerably further away than the stars on the map (if the interpretation is accurate) and completely irrelevant to the starmap.

I'll echo what others have said. Great thread and I really like the way it's presented. I don't know much about the Betty Hill Starmap, but I'm definitely more curious about it now. I find it interesting that there are a lot of Sun-like stars and that there proximity to one another and to Earth is reasonably close (astronomically speaking of course).

I do wonder how easy or hard it would be to find a match for a hand drawn star map. Is there anyway we can test this? Could one get a bunch of people to draw some random set of points on some paper and see if one can match it up to a set of stars that are close together and to Earth on top of that? Just to see if it's really easy to find a match or not. I'm not sure if there is any commercial software that can do that or not though.

It would certainly add a lot of credibility to the story if it's hard to do. Especially since the map is clearly not drawn from an Earthy point of view and access to information about various stars not being as easy to find back in '61 as it is today with the Internet. And no access to 3d star map programs what so ever either.

How do you do this? I don't have a job right now and I still have more to do with my time. This is the most nerdy thing I have ever seen. Interesting, but man, you gotta get some sun.

I was impressed by the work of Marjorie Fish at first, a few years ago. But there are far too many unknowns to be sure her interpretation is the correct one.

The leader of the aliens, who showed the map to Betty asked her where she is on the map that was filled with many more dots that the one displayed here. As she didn't know, the leader said, if you don't know where you are there is no point in my telling you where I am. He didn't even say "where my home planet or sun is located", so we don't know what the dots represent. He didn't even say his home world is on the map. It would make sense to show a map of the Solar System first, with easily recognizable giant planets (with rings, like the big massive dots on the right), and then zoom back. So basically he said nothing useful. Is it possible to show a map and give less information about it?

By eliminating the dots that don't fit, and bending geometry it's easy to find a match. Drawing lines between dots makes the geometry look more solid, but remember you have the right to put the lines anywhere you like between the dots.

Just look at this comparison:



The Sun is supposed to be the dot on the top-right.

Is it a good fit? Honestly? Obviously it is not a 3D projection including the two zeta Reticuli stars as the two big dots "big as nickels", because zeta1 and zeta2 would be much closer, the distance between them, 1/8th of a light year only, is much smaller than the distances between the other stars. On the computer generated map zeta 1 & 2 are seen as a single dot. On the other hand a perspective with a POV much closer to the two stars could be the reason why they look like this. It would be interesting to check.

reply to post by nablator


You make great points and echo many of my own thoughts regarding the Star Map. I have always found what the alien said regarding the map as somewhat curious. Surely an intelligent being would understand how to make the map easily comprehendable... such as "you're here".. *points finger*... "and we're way over here".. *points finger again*.

What an arrogant prick eh!

IRM

What an outstanding post!! I would rather read just one of these,than watch 100 youtube "videos". Awesome mate, I need to read it a few times to understand it fully, but your research and presentation is tip top!

[edit on 14-4-2009 by grifta]

Ok before i comment on this: Let me first say that I personally knew Betty Hill, though her husband had long since passed. My closest friend rented an apt. from her in Portsmouth NH many years ago....late eighties/early nineties.

I spoke with her about her experience many a night by tea and TV...and i will say there was no kinder soul...albeit..a bit odd. Betty was truly an odd person to sit and talk with...this by no means sheds any doubt on her claims not does it prove it happened. I will say this though, as a skeptic:

With all the star constellations, and certainly ALL the multiple star formations in the billions throughout the universe......the image that she presented could be associated with , jeez, countless star systems. I mean look at a star map sometime...hell go out to the desert and look at the sharp edge of our own Galaxy and beyond and youll see what i mean....

anyway thought id be fun to share that with you all...that i actually knew her and helped her bring thinsg into her apt many times and REFUSED dollar bills she wanted to hand me LOL...nice woman..

Excellent work, OP! You really put a lot of effort into this.

First, I'd like to stress that I believe the Hill Starmap to be genuine, but I have to disagree with Marjorie Fish's interpretation of it. There, I said it, and I stand on it, in spite of the danger of getting flamed by those who have too much invested in the Zeta Reticuli interpretation.

Allow me to explain. This map is the very reason that I took an interest in astrophysics to begin with. Specifically, the compositions, abundances, and positions of nearby stars. Over the years, as I got time, I put a lot of work into it myself.

Ms. Fish did an admirable job of reasoning, and she interviewed Mrs. Hill on several occasions, asking all the right questions. There's actually quite a bit more information concerning the dots on the map than is commonly disseminated.

There are a few points where I find the Fish interpretation to fall apart, however. First, and to my mind most glaring, is her identification of the two largest disks, the ones she labels as Zet1 and Zet2 Reticulum, as stars. In the original map Mrs. Hill drew, these two bodies exhibit crescents. They have a light side, a dark side, and the terminator is glaringly obvious. This is a property not found in self-luminous bodies such as stars. Those two bodies appear to represent planets, either a double-planet, or a planet and moon system. Mrs Hill in fact stated that planets were present on the map.

Second, the large disk in the center of the original drawing, the only star in fact that was large enough to even show a disk, and therefore the most prominent star in the map, is ignored by Ms. Fish entirely. It appears, by the crescents of the 'planets', to actually be the central star of the system, their 'sun'. All the other stars, including the ones on the 'trade routes', are represented by mere dots, some larger or brighter, some smaller or dimmer.

Third, if one removes the lines representing 'trade routes' from both maps, all resemblances promptly disappear. They both become two completely unrelated sets of dots.

My research into this is ongoing, slowly, and will probably never be finished by me. There are a plethora of computer programs out there that will allow one to rotate and travel to any known star, to check the views for yourself. Since I'll probably never get this finished, I'll just tell you something I've not released anywhere yet, and whoever wants to can run with it. Or not. For my money, that view comes from near Beta Comae Berenices, also known as Gliese 502 among other designations. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, It's near the north Galactic Pole (around one degree off from it), which is also a G class main sequence star.

All of the logic necessary to narrow down the search and identify the pattern is already on the internet, but is largely ignored, because most folks believe the Zet Ret interpretation, and so feel no need to dig further. A good start would be to restrict the initial search to upper K (K5-K0), G, and lower F (F9-F6) stars. Our Sun needs to be on one of the lines, since we were obviously visited. DON'T leave any of the stars on the map out, that smacks of cherry picking to produce a pattern. DO leave the planets out. they are irrelevant until the central star is firmly identified. I would say that MOST of the stars on the lines are habitable, but I'm not convinced they ALL are. Could be some mining or some such going on. Furthermore, according to Mrs Hill, some of those lines only represent 'expeditions', not necessarily trade. The stars on the lines, as Ms. Fish observed, should be in a logical sequence, distance-wise. In other words, the lines should go progressively further into the map, away from the viewpoint.

Edit: We now have the Hipparcos and Tycho data to work with, where positions are a bit more accurate and precise than the Gliese data that Fish worked with, and more precise than the Gliese Catalog of Nearby Stars 3rd Edition (provisional) that I initially started working with back in '92 or so.

That's my .02 cents worth. Considering inflation, it will probably soon be worth .01 cents. Or less.

nenothtu out

[edit on 2009/4/16 by nenothtu]

reply to post by nenothtu


That's an interesting point of view! Thank you for your input!

I must say that I have not thought of it that way, but you give me new ideas... Nevertheless, as you say, I also believe it is a genuine "star map" or then maybe "star and planets map"...

Food for thought definitely!

reply to post by SpookyVince


Do you have a copy of the original, hand-drawn map? It took me a long time, back in the day, to find one. I finally found it in John Fuller's book, "The Interrupted Journey", published in 1966 and which I believe is out of print now.

If you don't have it, I've got a scan of it somewhere on this computer. The ones I've found on the internet are generally lacking, and poor quality/low resolution. The one I have is 2153x2089 pixels, and about 1.25 MegaBytes, in JPG format. It's fairly heavily dithered, as that's how they printed pictures back then, sort of like a newspaper picture, but finer-grained.

I was going to put all my findings, together with what I've uncovered of Mrs. Hill's comments on the map, and Ms. Fish's reasoning, into a pdf file and release it on the internet, but I've not yet typed it up, since my research into it isn't complete. No telling how long that might take, if it ever GETS done!

If you want that scan, just fire off a U2U to me with your e-mail address, and I'll send it on.

nenothtu out

This one isn't bad:
www.kochkyborg.de...
Unless it's not the original drawing. You tell me.

reply to post by nablator

That's one of the better reproductions, but it has lost a little bit in the "clean up" process. The lines are slightly (very slightly) different, and the erasures that Mrs Hill did on the original are not demonstrated.

I've uploaded the scan to ATS, so that anyone who wants it can download it from here. Because of the size of the scan, I won't try to embed it in this thread, but will provide a link to it instead. After clicking on the link, just right click on the image, and 'save as'.

Hill Original Starmap

The scan is from John Fuller's book "The Interrupted Journey", New York, The Dial Press, 1966.

Edit: apparently ATS resized the image to 1024x993 pixels, around 207 kb. It's still a good representation, you just can't zoom in to the level where you can see to dots of the dithering. The erasures and all the dots are still in evidence.

nenothtu out


[edit on 2009/4/16 by nenothtu]