National Solar Observatory, USPS office in Sunspot, NM evacuated for 'safety reasons'

a reply to: BASSPLYR

No one has any concrete theories. Just a lot of speculation. Glad to see you here though, would love to hear your thoughts on it all

That you tube video was kind of awesome. Saw some familiar faces there lol

a reply to: Fiscal

Here are a few things worth noting from the video on the ground that corroborates the drone footage.

The guy filming says that the sheriff is actively there pursuing people on the property.

A woman at the end of the video states that windows have been boarded up and the blinds closed.

Strange smell (this was also noted earlier by published shadow who watched the video) thanks again

Another guy who went in and saw the laboratory door open said you could walk through and see everything.

The guy filming also noted that it looked as though someone was inside of the building with the strange smell, and they had cleaned the floor recently enough to show footprints.

An xfiles book I believe was found in a trash can inside the building with the odd smell. Is this some kind of a joke from someone who previously entered ?

Also theres a constant low electrical noise in the background. Here is the video m.youtube.com...

a reply to: BigDave-AR

Yeah, I mean, anything is possible, but from an IT and business perspective, you’d build your infrastructure along the lines of the use cases for the facility. An observatory pulls data and sends data, true, but from what I’ve looked into, the data that this facility seems to send is limited (in terms of bandwidth requirements). Even sending high quality images daily rapidly is not going to suck that much resource unless the images are of fairly huge size.

Maybe someone knows more about an observatory’s data transmission requirements of this caliber. That would help in determining what type of IT infrastructure they would require and we could speculate from there. But the images I’ve seen from the observatory are nothing special in terms of data size.

Mostly lurkong but still following along pretty constantly... Seems to me like the spy/data breach angle certainly seems like the most logical answer to me so far but if that's true their response to it still absolutely baffles me. Plus what could be important data wise to steal/hack from this location that wouldnt be available somewhere else... Or what makes this specific location more likely than any others in the area. Is it the physical location of it or the subject(s) it was working on? Still so many questions

Besides observing, there is another interesting possibility. What would something that has antenna pointed at the sky be good for? And who would be the go to agency if you were moving something from that location?

a reply to: threeeyesopen

I was referring to the Ground Zero secret service guy video. I haven’t seen the drone footage yet as I just got home.

Thanks for the rundown. I’m going to go dig this one up now and watch.

a reply to: Zaphod58


It's funny that you say this since those guy's (?) in the picture look more like DHS then Blackwater guys.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Besides observing, there is another interesting possibility. What would something that has antenna pointed at the sky be good for? And who would be the go to agency if you were moving something from that location?

I read somewhere that they have satellite connection here so data can easily be transferred. Cant find the site I read it on earlier but I think it was on one of the NSO sites for this particular observatory.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Zaph..

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Besides observing, there is another interesting possibility. What would something that has antenna pointed at the sky be good for? And who would be the go to agency if you were moving something from that location?

My thoughts exactly (on page 19 or so, when I thought this thread was dyeing).
Then I pop back on and Y'all are on page 60 something! WOW.
Wonder what the heck is going on up their.

originally posted by: Fiscal
a reply to: BigDave-AR

Yeah, I mean, anything is possible, but from an IT and business perspective, you’d build your infrastructure along the lines of the use cases for the facility. An observatory pulls data and sends data, true, but from what I’ve looked into, the data that this facility seems to send is limited (in terms of bandwidth requirements). Even sending high quality images daily rapidly is not going to suck that much resource unless the images are of fairly huge size.

Maybe someone knows more about an observatory’s data transmission requirements of this caliber. That would help in determining what type of IT infrastructure they would require and we could speculate from there. But the images I’ve seen from the observatory are nothing special in terms of data size.

May be they are simply a receiver and storage. I'd be interested to find out what their backup procedure consists of and how often backups are taken offsite.

If they were simply receiving and storing then moving backups offsite for analysis then all they would require is a satellite link.

Sorry for the length of this post.

Like I said earlier, I’ve been doing A LOT of digging and I wanted to share something else I've dug up over the past couple of days. It’s probably nothing, could be something - who knows - but it helps no one just sitting in my head.

We know that the Sunspot Observatory was shut down on September 6th, so, like I’m sure many people did, I went to heliosviewer.org to look at any data I thought might be relevant.

Unsurprisingly, on most of the instruments, there’s no data for the dates of September 5th through September 10th. The oddest thing to me was the lack of SDO/AIA data. In the month of August, the AIA has 2000+ images per day. Then we have nothing for September 1st or 2nd. Then 2400 Images on the 3rd and 2025 on the 4th. Then no AIA data again until September 10th.

So, for S&Gs I went directly to NASA’s SDO archives ( sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov... ) and put in the following dates at 1024 resolution since it was the first date missing from heliosviewer:
Start Date:
2018-09-05 00:00
End Date:
2018-09-05 23:45

I encourage you to check it out, it’s 95 Images once it loads and what stands out to me is at 6:40:58 UT until 6:56:22 UT. You can use any measurement as long as it’s AIA.
It could be anything (or nothing), but it’s there for at least 16 minutes before it goes out of view. I mean, if the SDO picks up the moon passing in view based on what we saw on the 9th, we know that the AIA does at least see objects that passes its view but what we see here could just be a technical issue. I can’t say because I’m not an expert on the matter.

Now for the fun part. I also went to the national solar observatory edu site, and checked out their historical data.
I went to the main NSO FTP site( ftp.nso.edu...)

On the nisp directory, the date modified is 9/5/18 at 6:51:00 AM. After digging through subdirectories, I can’t find any folder, file, or any other data with that time stamp - which tells me that something within the nisp directory was deleted or moved - thus the “last modified”.

Now, I’m not sure if the time on the FTP is universal time, but if it is, it’s pretty odd that something gets deleted from their archive and just so happens to coincide in the general time of what I pointed out above.. THEN the site where NISP data originates from (if I read the NSO website correctly) subsequently closes the next day?

Welcome to my Rabbit Hole.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

That actually possibly confirms my point about the Internet connection there being shoddy. In the video I referenced this secret service source says they are running gigabytes of data constantly. Satellite connections are notoriously terrible.

They do have a specific upside though and that’s use in remote or rural locations like this. Their connection alone makes the interview with ‘Sam’ suspect, especially as his technical talk track seems more like something from an old TV show with poor writing.

It also makes the hacking angle interesting. On a limited connection, it would be theoretically easier to notice suspect activity—depending on what load they’re running relative to resources.

Im sure they have a satellite dish or other antenna for sending data receiving. Standard stuff I'd assume.
As far as receiving signals from space or having that kind of power, it's a strictly optical site.
Isn't it?

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I’d say that’s a distinct possibility. Or moving data in batches during downtimes.

a reply to: PublishedShadow

Man, you're good buddy...

Thanks for being such a detailed Sherlock detective

originally posted by: Fiscal
a reply to: Vasa Croe

That actually possibly confirms my point about the Internet connection there being shoddy. In the video I referenced this secret service source says they are running gigabytes of data constantly. Satellite connections are notoriously terrible.

They do have a specific upside though and that’s use in remote or rural locations like this. Their connection alone makes the interview with ‘Sam’ suspect, especially as his technical talk track seems more like something from an old TV show with poor writing.

It also makes the hacking angle interesting. On a limited connection, it would be theoretically easier to notice suspect activity—depending on what load they’re running relative to resources.

Well...another odd thought....what if it was radio transmissions? It may have nothing to do with photos or large files of any sort.

Plenty of "spy" rings have used radio for years. Hell...even Nellie Ohr from Fusion GPS picked up a radio operator license when the Russia investigation started....not that it is connected, but could be something that was being transmitted via radio...hence why the speculation about the towers coming down.

a reply to: PublishedShadow

That's a lot to digest lol, so the short of it is that you believe they are hiding something, is that correct? If so what exactly in layman's terms please

I've tried imputing the times you gave but nothing is coming up, that could be my fault too though I've never used that site before.

a reply to: PublishedShadow

Good catch. I need to take a look at that. I was on their FTP earlier, but looking at the least impactful stuff ever—the Sunspotter Newsletter. Lol, I’d like to go take a look now.

One thing I thought about while looking at your post on uploads from Sunspot is that it seems like they don’t run the telescope all the times. The uploads there may correspond to specific times they’re running experiments / observations.

That modified date though, now that’s interesting.