Originally posted by Arbitrageur
However I'm not sure why you say it's a deliberate hoax? I see people pointing to glitches thinking it's something but the glitch was really there
right? So is it more of a misinterpretation of the glitch than an actual hoax? or am I missing something?
Thank you for your post, also thanks for your legitimate question, which will allow me to clarify some points: i will try to explain why i have no
doubts that at the very least Dr. Marina Popovich lied, Sitchin based his claims on "some rumor going around" (which is not exactly the best source
on which to base some serious statements) while Don Eckert has been the only one of the three who kept somehow a relatively prudent approach.
First, the claims:

according to Popovich, the "incident was discussed by
Gorbashev and Bush in Malta", but the statement in such a contest was implying that they discussed about the alleged alien spacecraft (otherwise, it
wouldn't have been relevant to the topic and she had no reasons to even mention it). Basically, if we want to believe to her, then we shall assume
that the President of USSR was provided with some crappy cropped picture instead of the full dataset, which is self explanatory even to the untrained
eye, not to mention to the scientists' ones. She probably overlooked the chances that some day the full dataset would have been made public. But this
is just a small detail: there are her claims, she didn't even refer to any doubt about the origin of the object: remember, in case of presence of
something anomalous, the first thing to rule out are glitches cased by loss of data, bad transmission etc. This can be believed: after looking at the
infrared dataset (which full series is characterized by the same glitch on the same EXACT "X" coordinates, and just variating in lenght and in
position on the "Y" ones: long story short it's an obvious glitch).

But let's talk about the evidence which by itself is the proof that at the origin of the story there is a deliberate hoax, i'll explain now the
why:
Comparison between the photo released by Popovich and image # 2550033 Target: PHOBOS taken on 25 Mar 1989 09:22:36
Range 268 km
Channel 3 (infrared)
8 ms exposure
We can notice that the image is the same, the one released by Popovich looks just a little stretched horizontally, but not only: it has been
cropped;
and what has been cut out from the image? Simple, the part that would have revealed that it was a glitch: basically, this is the part that has been
removed:
a very strange and very convenient coincidence.
If she would have shared the unretouched version of the photo, then the story of the gigantic spacecraft in proximity of Phobos II would have never
existed because the first observer would have pointed immediately out that it was an obvious glitch in the infrared channel.
Now, there are chances that she has been fooled by the guy who gave the photo to her, in this case the hoaxer would be Leonov but all in all it would
be a deliberat6e hoax anyway, since no one of them ever came clean in order to clarify it: on the contrary, Dr. Popovich kept endorsing the story,
giving public lecrtures, writing books, etcetera. Shall we assume that she is still unaware of the existence of the full Phobos dataset? Or that she
still believes it's an alien spacecraft following Phobos II in the same exact position, no matter if the target was Phobos (the moonlet) or Jupiter?
Let's don't forget that to the data had access an international team, including the USSR, Bulgaria, Germany, Finland, Great Britain and USA
scientists, so the idea of some international cover up made to hide a glitch is extremely far-fetched (if not ridiculous).
Now, regarding Sitchin claims about the allged "strangeness" of phobos' shadow, the exmplanation is juist one: he has never seen more photos of
Phobo's shadow, otherwise he would have realized that it's not unusual at all: actually that's its normal appearence, unde some circumstances:
here are some examples of Phobos's shadow caught on camera by Mars orbiter and Mars express:
www.msss.com...
and
and
and
and
www.dlr.de...
Image caption (to be read carefully):
On November 10, 2005, Mars Express spotted the shadow of Phobos crossing the surface of Mars. The shadow is smeared because both Phobos
and Mars Express were moving as the image was taken over the course of several seconds. Mars Express' High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) is
a "pushbroom" style imager, which captures long image strips along Mars' surface one line at a time as the orbiter moves from south to north at
12,600 kilometers per hour (7,800 miles per hour). With each line advanced by HRSC from bottom to top, Phobos' shadow had shifted slightly from west
to east at 7,200 kilometers per hour (4,500 miles per hour). The shadow is also darker at the center than the middle because, as seen from the surface
of Mars, Phobos' diameter is much smaller than the disk of the Sun. Source Credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
www.esa.int...
www.planetary.org...
So the claim that the image of the shadow was "inexplicable"
was arbitrary and uncorroborated by nothing but some personal beliefs: one of the two: he'd better to go back to talk about sumerians (in which
subject matter i believe him to be a REAL expert, as said also before) or, alternatively, if he wants to be taken seriously he should to research
better his stuff, especially before writing a book, since BS can't be deleted once the books have been sold.
I hope this clarifies something

[edit on 17/10/2009 by internos]