Looking for Planet X? Start Here!, page 1

..."here" being Mt. Haleakala in Hawaii.

Ok. I admit it. I've come down with 2012-itis. OMG the Annunaki are here!!!!

Nah. Course not.

I'm an agnostic about most things, and this is no exception, but I was quite entertained by this article in New Scientist:Is There A Planet X?

Any new object would have to be well clear of the Kuiper belt to qualify as a planet. Yet intriguingly, it is studies of the belt that have suggested the planet's existence. Some KBOs travel in extremely elongated orbits around the sun. Others have steep orbits almost at right angles to the orbits of all the major planets. "Those could be signs of perturbation from a massive distant object," says Robert Jedicke, a solar system scientist at the University of Hawaii.

....

In December 2008, the first prototype of the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) was brought into service at the Haleakala observatory on Maui, Hawaii. Soon, four telescopes - equipped with the world's largest digital cameras, at 1.4 billion pixels apiece - will search the skies for anything that blinks or moves. Its main purpose is to look out for potentially hazardous asteroids bound for Earth, but inhabitants of the outer solar system will not escape its all-seeing eyes.

Jedicke and his team are busy developing software to spot objects automatically using Pan-STARRS. The discovery of a further planet would be thrilling, he says.

It would certainly set things off around here.

I have no idea about 2012, the Annunaki, Planet X, or whatever. But for those interested in that stuff, I'd keep an eye on the STARRS project. It would be very entertaining if it came up with something. ATS would go nuts. Or more nuts, anyway.

Funnily enough, I've been to Mt. Haleakala, and the night I was there I saw one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen... The observatory seemed deserted, and there were no other cars in the car park.

Essentially, myself and probably four other guys were in an SUV just hanging out, looking at the stars, and waiting for dawn because the ride down the mountain as dawn comes up is pretty spectacular.

The top of Mt. Haleakala is 10,000 feet above sea level, and the sky was FULL of stars. A layer of light cloud stretched out at the very horizon, but pretty much the whole sky was visible. At some point, I've no idea what time of night, I noticed something very peculiar, and asked if anyone else could see it. We all tumbled out of the car and observed a white line, at a guess maybe third or fourth magnitude, stretching across the entire sky.

It was difficult to focus on. To me it looked as if it was made of sparks, another guy said it looked like a guitar string vibrating.

What made it even more peculiar was that it was traversing the sky laterally, slowly but perceptibly.

After perhaps ten minutes, it faded out. Then, maybe 15 minutes later (we'd all got back in the car - it's freezing at those altitudes and I had come along unexpectedly and was unprepared for the cold) it reappeared. This time it either didn't last as long or I hadn't noticed it very quickly. Again, it swept the sky slowly and faded out.

I've racked my brains about this, and the nnly possibility that I can think of is some sort of Star Wars weapons test. Discussing this in the past, people have come up with things I can definitely rule out:

aircraft contrails: I've seen enough of these to know the difference. If they are blown across the sky, there's always turbulence, and they get larger, more irregular and more diffuse as time passes. This phenomenon was completely regular and maintained straight-line compactness for many minutes, until it faded out quite quickly.

a meteor or bolide: again, I've seen a few of these, one very spectacular bolide in particular. As you'd expect, they streak across the sky and vanish. They don't leave a trail that persists for a quarter of an hour and appears to sparkle.

lightning or other electrical phenomenon: it was a cloudless sky (except for the clouds on the distant horizon). Further, it was silent.

If anyone has any ideas I'm certainly interested in new input.

Meantime, keep an eye on STARRS and look out for Planet X. Enjoy.