Hovering UFO Baffles Astronomy Club Members

reply to post by Jezus

See that's the whole deal... take belief out of the equation and it gets much easier and much harder to deal with things.
I can believe a lot of things about this particular set of phenomenon, I can believe that aliens are the likely culprits (and by the way, I do believe that life beyond earth is not just likely, but probable) but I can't prove it.
I can believe this light is an alien craft (I don't in this case), but I can't prove it.
The trick is NOT to bring preconceived notions and beliefs to the table. Instead trying to wriggle out of your preconceived notions and then you can begin to really see.
If you take away all preconceived notions (about the movement of objects, about luminosity) from this case, you have an unusual light in the sky, that does not match with other observable celestial phenomena, witnessed by four reasonably knowledgeable folks. That's it.

Originally posted by kenochs
I'm not negating what these folks are seeing. I'm not in any way suggesting that there aren't hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of sightings that are just as credible as this one (which as I said earlier is unusually credible).
But for me, (I'm not a cynic, but I am a skeptic) unexplainable light in the sky does not automatically equal intelligent control. What it suggests is that I (or all of us perhaps) don't have the knowledge to successfully explain what is is we've seen.

Thanks for the reply - I'm sure there are huge numbers of UFO sightings from around the world (many of which go unreported due to the ridicule factor) but its worth pointing out that all these incidents do not just involve 'lights in the sky'.

Some unknown objects are visualy corellated on (sometimes multiple) radar screens displaying completely unprecedented flight characteristics/ aerial manouverability/ rates of speed and have also been known to exhibit electromagnetic effects on actual aircraft.
You can read about some of the incidents here but its probably just better researching individual case histories for yourself.

There are some good links below dealing with common misconceptions about the UFO subject..

www.ufologie.net...
www.mufon.com...


theres also this relevant quote from John B Alexander:

“The undeniable reality is that there are a substantial number of multi-sensor UFO cases backed by thousands of credible witnesses. In the physical domain there are many photos, videos, radar tracking, satellite sensor reports, landing traces including depressions and anomalous residual radiation, electromagnetic interference, and confirmed physiological effects. Personal observations have been made both day and night, often under excellent visibility with some at close range. Included are reports from multiple independent witnesses to the same event. Psychological testing of some observers has confirmed their mentally competence. Why is none of this considered evidence?


There are over 3000 cases reported by pilots, some of which include interference with flight controls. On numerous occasions air traffic controllers and other radar operators have noted unexplained objects on their scopes. So too have several astronomers and other competent scientists reported their personal observations. Many military officials from several countries have confirmed multi-sensor observations of UFOs. The most senior air defense officers of Russia, Brazil, Belgium and recently a former Chief of Naval Operations in Chile all have stated that UFOs are real. These cases and comments are a miniscule fraction of the total body of evidence.


Of course they do not constitute irrefutable proof. However, to state there is no evidence suggestive of intelligent extraterrestrial life simply belies the facts. Decades in duration and global in nature, there are too many hard sensor data-points and millions of eyewitnesses to ignore. We certainly can debate the significance of specific data and question whether or not it establishes a causal relationship between the observations and extraterrestrial life.However, it is only through ignorance or pomposity that one can say no evidence exists.”

John B. Alexander,Ph.D. -Advisory board for the National Institute for Discovery Science

Cheers.

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

Originally posted by kenochs
reply to post by karl 12

 

But then, you get replies that say things like 'obviously it's intelligently controlled,' or you draw a totally unfounded inference like "indication of other worldly intelligence either in direct or indirect form

I don't think you understand what I and the OP have been trying to say. From your quote above, you inferred that the possibility of it being intelligently controlled was totally unfounded, but as I have said, from the objects behaviour, it is almost impossible not to come to this conclusion, as behaviour such as displayed here simply doesn't happen naturally.

reply to post by karl 12

you're right. Sightings is the wrong word. I should have said credible evidence of UFO's.
The real issue is where this credible evidence leads us, and what that credible evidence suggests.
What it suggests to me is that there's a lot we don't know, about a lot of things. It doesn't lead me to the conclusion that this light was a. intelligently controlled, or b. that aliens are routinely flying around upstairs.
Also, and I hate to say this, but using NIDIS as a credible source is a but dishonest, the whole institute was founded by a believer to try and prove what he already believed. Hardly a credible scientific pursuit. And even he admits its not irrefutable proof.
And quite the reverse, its not pomposity to disbelieve the idea UFO's are piloted by aliens. Rather its an acceptance of our own lack of knowledge about the cosmos.

reply to post by nik1halo

I say again, it's totally unfounded. See my post on the behavior of the moon.
To not understand how something moves cannot lead us to the conclusion that something smart is moving it.
The analog that I began with is this... the human eye is almost inconceivably complicated, that doesn't mean that God made it.
You're thinking on this subject is the same.

It was the Maitreya star heralding the Antichrist. Now even they have seen it. His first interview is coming.

Originally posted by kenochs
The real issue is where this credible evidence leads us, and what that credible evidence suggests.

Yes,I agree with you on that one -to my mind there exists credible government documentary evidence, credible radar/sonar evidence, credible electromagnetic interference evidence, credible ground trace evidence and credible (circumstantial) evidence in the form of sworn eyewitness testimony from 1000s of credible individuals.

I'd also say there are credible grounds to beleive that many United States Air Force 'explanations' for specific UFO incidents are deliberately concocted falsehoods -see here.

As to what it suggests -well to me it suggests the UFO subject is a very real one and there remains a great number of truly puzzling,highly unusual incidents which defy rational,mundane and prosaic explanation.

What does it suggest to you?

Originally posted by kenochs
Also, and I hate to say this, but using NIDIS as a credible source is a but dishonest, the whole institute was founded by a believer...

If you're not going to even bother addressing the content of the statement and just make negative generalizations about UFO organisations whats the point in having a sincere discussion?

For what its worth,there are other statements below- similar but not from John B Alexander (PHD).

"More than 10,000 sightings have been reported, the majority of which cannot be accounted for by any scientific explanation, eg that they are hallucinations, the effects of light refraction, meteors, wheels falling from aeroplanes, and the like. They have been tracked on radar screens and the observed speeds have been as great as 9,000 mph. I am convinced that these objects do exist and they are not manufactured by any nation on earth. I can therefore see no alternative to accepting the theory that they come from an extraterrestrial source."
Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding, Commanding Officer of the RAF during WWII.



"We had a number of reports from reputable individuals (well-educated serious-minded folks, scientists and fliers) who surely saw something".
As Air Force Chief of Staff, in his 1965 autobiography, Mission With LeMay, stated that although the bulk of UFO reports could be explained as conventional or natural phenomena, some could not.
Many of the mysteries might be explained away as weather balloons, stars, reflected lights, all sorts of odds and ends. I don't mean to say that, in the unclosed and unexplained or unexplainable instances, those were actually flying objects. All I can say is that no natural phenomena could be found to account for them... Repeat again: There were some cases we could not explain. Never could."
General Curtis LeMay
Statement from 1965 autobiography Mission With LeMay, with MacKinlay Kantor, New York: Doubleday, 1965.



"Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitude and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles."
Dr .H Marshall Chadwell, former assistant director of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence, in a December, 1952 memo to then-director of the CIA, General Walter B. Smith.



"... no aircraft, neither in the United States, either in the Soviet Union is currently able to achieve the speed attributed to these objects from the radars and from the observatories. These objects appear to be driven by an intelligence the way in which they fly. According to reports from scientists and technical personnel, these objects fly in formation and finish manoeuvres that seem to point out that are not completely driven from an automatic equipment. These objects are in incontestable mode the result of long investigations and highly technological and exceptional knowledge."
Rear Admiral Delmer S. Fahrney, head missile testing of the American Navy on January 16, 1957.



"Every time I get skeptical, I think of the other reports made by experienced pilots and radar operators, scientists, and other people who know what they are looking at. These reports were thoroughly investigated and they are still unknowns.
We have no aircraft on this earth that can at will so handily outdistance our latest jets... The pilots, radar specialists, generals, industrialists, scientists, and the man on the street who have told me, I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it myself, knew what they were talking about."
Captain Edward J. Ruppelt
Chief of Project Blue Book, from his book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 1956.



"The evidence that there are objects which have been seen in our atmosphere, and even on terra firma, that cannot be accounted for either as man-made objects or as any physical force or effect known to our scientists seems to me to be overwhelming... A very large number of sightings have been vouched for by persons whose credentials seem to me unimpeachable. It is striking that so many have been trained observers, such as police officers and airline or military pilots. Their observations have in many instances... been supported either by technical means such as radar or, even more convincingly, by... interference with electrical apparatus of one sort or another..."
Admiral Lord Hill-Norton (GCB), Chief of Defense Staff, Ministry of Defense, Britain; Chairman, Military Committee of NATO; Admiral of the Fleet; Member of House of Lords.



"I concentrate on the science. I'm interested in the UFOs seen by the police and military witnesses. I'm interested in the near misses that pilots report, where their aircraft nearly collide with these things. I'm interested in the visual sightings backed up by radar. I'm interested in the military bases that are overflown by these things. I'm interested in the cases where you have radiation readings on the ground.
These are no lights in the sky. These are not misidentifications of fantasy prone individuals. This is a cutting-edge technology being reported by reliable, trained observers, and it is something that goes beyond what we can do.
That to me suggests that if it is not ours, it belongs to someone else. If that technology is better than ours, then the extraterrestrial hypothesis seems to me the best explanation."
Nick Pope
Head of the "UFO desk" at Air Secretariat 2-A, British Ministry of Defence from 1991-1994.



"There are unidentified flying objects. That is, there are a hard core of cases - perhaps 20 to 30 percent in different studies - for which there is no explanation... We can only imagine what purpose lies behind the activities of these quiet, harmlessly cruising objects that time and again approach the earth. The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is that they are simply watching what we are up to." (Redbook, vol. 143, September 1974.)
Dr. Margaret Mead, world-renowned Anthropologist.



"The opposite conclusion could have been drawn from The Condon Report's content, namely, that a phenomenon with such a high ratio of unexplained cases (about 30 percent) should arouse sufficient scientific curiosity to continue its study."
"From a scientific and engineering standpoint, it is unacceptable to simply ignore substantial numbers of unexplained observations... the only promising approach is a continuing moderate-level effort with emphasis on improved data collection by objective means... involving available remote sensing capabilities and certain software changes."
Ronald D Story - American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics UFO Subcommittee -New York: Doubleday, 1980



"There are some definite flight type characteristics that are seen now that I would say represent genuine UFOs...ie: instant acceleration; instant stop; vertical acceleration -up into the air and down to the ground; reverses in direction; right angle turns -all in silence -multiple objects sometimes separating and then going back into each other.
They are classic,what I would call,genuine UFO characteristics -things that we can not do in a conventional sense".
British Detective Constable Gary Heseltine - Police UFO reporting organisation,PRUFOS.



"Reports of anomalous aerial objects (AAO) appearing in the atmosphere continue to be made by pilots of almost every airline and air force of the world in addition to private and experimental test pilots.
This paper presents a review of 56 reports of AAO in which electromagnetic effects (E-M) take place on-board the aircraft when the phenomenon is located nearby but not before it appeared or after it had departed. "
"Reported E-M effects included radio interference or total failure, radar contact with and without simultaneous visual contact, magnetic and/or gyro-compass deviations, automatic direction finder failure or interference, engine stopping or interruption, dimming cabin lights, transponder failure, and military aircraft weapon system failure."
"We're not dealing with mental projections or hallucinations on the part of the witness but with a real physical phenomenon."
(Haines, Dr. Richard, "Fifty-Six Aircraft Pilot Sightings Involving Electromagnetic Effects," MUFON 1992 International UFO Symposium Proceedings.)
Dr. Richard Haines, Psychologist specializing in pilot and astronaut "human factors" research for the Ames NASA Research Center in California-Chief of the Space Human Factors Office.

www.abovetopsecret.com...


Theres also this interesting audio quote from Dr James E Mcdonald who was the senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics and professor in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Arizona.

www.cohenufo.org...

Originally posted by Heliocentric
But as we watched it more closely it was very surprising as to the manner in which it morphed into various shapes and sizes. Its brightness would vary some but that was easily seen as being caused by the low-lying clouds on the horizon. As we commonly call it – it was “sitting in the soup”. When they would move in front of it the objects brightness would dim some. Otherwise it would maintain its brightness. That was easily seen via binocular observations.

The longer we watched it the more curious we all became and with that growing curiosity we quickly set two telescopes onto it. Two different sized telescopes were used, one, Celestron 11” Schimdt-Cassegrain telescope and a smaller Orion 4.5” dobsonian telescope. Between the two we could pull it in for a much closer look in a very inquisitive effort to determine just what it actually was. Charts and web sites were checked also to make sure we weren’t simply forgetting perhaps one event that may explain what we were now seeing. Nothing could be found.

The Celestron was using a 40mm eyepiece for a much wider field of view whereas the smaller Orion had a 15mm eyepiece to pull it in much closer. Through the Orion one could easily see what appeared right off as a bell shape. The same was viewed in the other also.

But as mentioned before it morphed into what was clearly seen and could be interpreted as the same basic outline of the Shuttle that anyone would see as it flies over. Again, the same basic shape as to what you would see looking up at the bottom of it. That distinctive shape was easily recognized. At the rear of it you could see what looked like bluish green waves that would both come and go from the main rear line of the object. Nowhere else was this color and wave seen, just at the rear.

The objects color was a combination of the just mentioned bluish green at the rear to a lighter orange yellow up through the main body and then into red orange, much more intense, than any of the other colors at the top or perhaps, from appearance at that time, leading edge. None of us had ever seen a color distribution of this sort before. Especially on either the Shuttle or any other normal day-to-day satellites. From our position/location it appeared to be hovering over either Bristow, Ok or possibly even Oklahoma City.

There was no attempt by any of us then to determine its specific distance or altitude from us. The same applies to its actual size. Visually, it appeared very similar to the size of Jupiter. Other than that comparison we honestly don’t know either its distance or specific altitude. It remained in the same position for approximately 40 minutes and never moved. Close to 8 P.M. we started to notice what appeared to be a ring of lights that was rotating around the bottom portion. The lights were seen in the same location that the bluish green colored waves were at. Several of us noticed this while looking at it through the telescopes.

Needless to say this was surprising to us all. This carried on for one to two minutes and then suddenly the object started to move. The movement was slow at the beginning but increased very rapidly. I had my eye glued to the 40mm eyepiece when this began and once it started I could not move. Within two seconds it had totally disappeared from open visual sight but I still had a lock on it in the eyepiece. Fast, very fast it moved from dead center in the eyepiece field of view upwards and at the same time was getting smaller and smaller as it flew away. Two or three seconds later it was totally gone from view in either of the telescopes.

The speed that it moved was without question way beyond anything that we have knowledge of or is publicly known to be in our military. At the rate it flew away would make a SR-71 Blackbird look very old and slow. Could it have possibly been a new experimental aircraft? Possibly yes but if so what was something such as that doing in Oklahoma? Most generally new experimental, top-secret aircraft of that type are being tested at either Edwards AFB or Area 51, not Oklahoma. In a nutshell, we will never know.
It was unidentifiable, it was in the air and flew away and it most certainly was an object of some unknown kind/type. From this alone it could be justifiably categorized as a UFO.

MUFON case#20.023 Long version:

mufoncms.com...

[edit on 21-10-2009 by Heliocentric]

Am I the only one who noticed this? Sounds a little big to be only noticed by that Observatory. If it was comparable to the size of Jupiter, everyone wouldve seen it, right? Check this out....link

[edit on 22-10-2009 by treemanx]

I like stories like this that come out about people whose hobby or career is to watch the sky and then see something they find to be very unusual and unexplainable. It lends more credence to the idea that there's something in our skies that isn't "normal" and might make people rethink the sightings of Joe/Jane Schmo on the street that just get laughed at.

I don't know if this has been posted here before.
I'm pretty new to this website and don't really know how to use the site all that well but I though it would be pretty interesting for you guys to see this video since it shows something similar to what I understand the astromnomers are talking about

The weird stuff starts at arround the 4:45 min mark

PLASMA ORB turns into FAKE PLANE UFO! by Pittsburgh, PA

sorry guys still don't know how to embed.

reply to post by karl 12

Mr. 12
You're right on that one. I shouldn't have killed the messenger and instead focused on the message.
Ultimately, we're close in philosophy but you're willing to draw conclusions I'm just intellectually capable of accepting.
What all this suggests to me is that this is proof (if that is the word) that there is a lot more going on in our skies (even earth's skies) than I/You/We can understand.
But I'm not willing to place the causation at the feet of an extraterrestrial intelligence. I just can't go there.

And I know you realize the irony of this discussion. Like Diogenes, I troll ATS in the hopes, the hopes that someone, somewhere might offer me some tiny scrap, some incontrovertible evidence that I can work with to allow me to buy into the ET mythos. So far, it hasn't happened.

Originally posted by kenochs
Mr. 12
You're right on that one. I shouldn't have killed the messenger and instead focused on the message.
Ultimately, we're close in philosophy but you're willing to draw conclusions I'm just intellectually capable of accepting.

Kenochs thanks for the reply,I don't think I'd ever (dare to) draw specific conclusions about the UFO phenomenon - just that it is a very real one.
Sure we can engage in speculation and conjecture about the nature of the objects involved but you're right that theres no unequivocable proof.

Having said that, characteristics of unknown objects involved in events like the Tehran incident, the Coyne incident, the RB-47 incident, the Colares incident, the Gosford incident, the Portage County incident etc..
all seem to point towards the notion that these things are not ours
...whatever that means in the wider context is still completely
open for discussion (and extremely perplexing) - maybe the only honest answer is 'I don't know'.

Hell,even if a person just looks solely at the police reports down the years then its pretty apparent something is going on.

Originally posted by kenochs
But I'm not willing to place the causation at the feet of an extraterrestrial intelligence. I just can't go there.

I certainly wouldn't rule out the ETH - just as I wouldn't rule out many other seemingly outlandish explanations like time travel or multi dimensionality.
Who knows they may even come from under the ocean.

Dr. Ivan T. Sanderson who suggested that aliens could remain undetected by building their bases beneath the world’s oceans.
Dr. Sanderson found that by actual count, over 50 percent of the UFO sightings had occurred over, coming from, or plunging into or coming out of water.

USO thread
Cheers.

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

reply to post by aaguedaa


Alison's videos are by far my favorite out there. Its always blown my mind that I don't see them discussed more here. I've been thinking about heading her way for a vacation to see it for myself, because she sees that stuff pretty much every night. Just mind blowing.

Back on subject... its exciting to finally see a case around my city. I want to start investigating for MUFON... but Oklahoma averages about 1-2 sightings per month... vs. 50+ in Texas and other nearby areas. For all the time I spend staring up, I hate that I've never seen anything.

Originally posted by Heliocentric

Originally posted by Xtraeme
It's a shame no one bothered to contact any of the radar sites in the area to see if RATCC had a possible explanation.

A possible explanation for a luminous, multi-colored object which morphs into various sizes and shapes, stays fixed in the same position for 40 minutes, then take off at incredible speed?

You seem to misinterpret my aim here. I'm convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that some UFOs are intelligently guided non-human or non-present day objects.

However I like ruling out all possibilities and I think the only way to do so is by involving all parties potentially in the know. This way when I present evidence in favor of a particular statement (IE. anomalous transient luminous events possibly indicating intelligence) I don't look like an overzealous fool advocating a particular bias.

It might be hard to get. It would be interesting to know if this object showed up on radar though.

Radar data is by far the best way to verify whether or not a UO represents a tangible thing, rather than something hallucinatory or possibly atmospheric. The more you read about the UFO phenomenon the more you'll notice that people feel there's some form of response from the object to the group. This highly suggests something psychological in nature (See: H. Rutledge's, Ph.D, book 'Project Identification' for an interesting empirical study)

Note: I'm not saying these people observing UFOs are imbalanced, doing drugs, or anything else defamatory; but rather that there's something more to this phenomenon than many people are willing to consider.

But this is the type of case you can't argue with.

Word of advice - there's always a counter-argument. Whether the counter-argument is any good is something else entirely, but people can and will dissent.

That's why it's always worth your time to get your peas in a row before making any specific claims. There are only a handful of cases in UFO history that really stand up to scrutiny and those are the ones that have been properly researched, vetted, and involved all possible organizations capable of making an identification.

IE/ '57 RB-47 case.

It's obviously intelligently controlled.

Intelligent control usually implies maneuvering. The object stood still and then zipped off. Do I have a potential better explanation?

Oblique angles can cause an object that looks as though it's heading towards a position from space to appear to stand still and then as it bounces of the atmosphere "zip off." Is that what I believed happened? No, because the observation occurred over 40 minutes.

I think this is a good candidate for a genuine TLE, but adding the "intelligence" modifier to this case is a bit tenuous. To infer intelligence requires knowing that what we were seeing was a "physical object" not an atmospheric phenomenon. Second it requires knowing it was a craft. To determine the first requires at a minimum radar. The second requires better visual data. Though the fact that the rear of the object was exhibiting different color variation from the front does seem to suggest exhaust.

It's a water tight case. What are the arguments against? That the Astronomy Club probably made this up as a publicity stunt in order to finance their new sky-roof cafeteria?

... Now that you mention it. People will grasp at anything, always remember that. If you can't attack the evidence -- attack the character.

Also there have been a number of groups in the past that have reported non-events to MUFON to get them excited over nothing.

Pranksters aren't going away any time soon.

Or, we have positively identified an intelligently controlled object that with most likelihood was not of this Earth. The door's open for alternative theories of course...

Of which there's a huge set of possibilities and a near infinite set of sub-possibilities.

[edit on 22-10-2009 by Xtraeme]

Originally posted by kenochs
reply to post by Jezus

 

See that's the whole deal... take belief out of the equation and it gets much easier and much harder to deal with things.
I can believe a lot of things about this particular set of phenomenon, I can believe that aliens are the likely culprits (and by the way, I do believe that life beyond earth is not just likely, but probable) but I can't prove it.
I can believe this light is an alien craft (I don't in this case), but I can't prove it.
The trick is NOT to bring preconceived notions and beliefs to the table. Instead trying to wriggle out of your preconceived notions and then you can begin to really see.
If you take away all preconceived notions (about the movement of objects, about luminosity) from this case, you have an unusual light in the sky, that does not match with other observable celestial phenomena, witnessed by four reasonably knowledgeable folks. That's it.

My opinion is that the evidence gets to a point where you are actually making a BIGGER leap in logic to suggest some other amazing phenomenon besides an intelligently piloted "vehicle".

I haven't checked this report out in much detail, but this guy is an astronomer?? May I offer a few comments, as just an amateur..

But as we watched it more closely it was very surprising as to the manner in which it morphed into various shapes and sizes.

Why 'surprising'? Any object low to the horizon in poor 'seeing' will waver in shape and size.


Its brightness would vary some but that was easily seen as being caused by the low-lying clouds on the horizon.

As above, bright objects near the horizon will vary enormously without clouds - just go check out Venus or Jupiter, or better yet, Sirius (stars are a point source, so their brightness varies dramatically). Clouds cause a different, slower effect.

As we commonly call it – it was “sitting in the soup”.

Maybe in the US they do? Not here in Oz - I've never heard that term used in this context. Astronomers here refer to the 'seeing' conditions, or simply refer to it being in the haze near the horizon. It's not a big deal, but if you are trying to be thought of as credible you should avoid using ambiguous (some might say 'silly') terms..


When they would move in front of it the objects brightness would dim some. Otherwise it would maintain its brightness. That was easily seen via binocular observations.

(Over)Stating the bleeding obvious...? And now it's the clouds, not the 'soup'?


Between the two we could pull it in for a much closer look in a very inquisitive effort to determine just what it actually was.

This sounds extremely unlike an astronomer. Binocs 'pull it in' too, but unless you refer to the actual magnifications and know how big the object is, you cannot 'guesstimate' whether you will be able to resolve the object.


Charts and web sites were checked also to make sure we weren’t simply forgetting perhaps one event that may explain what we were now seeing. Nothing could be found.

An 'EVENT'? What, like a comet? supernova/nova? satellite? This is an astronomy club and they don't know what is currently going on? Anything found on a 'chart' (I presume he means either printed sky charts or online ones) is very unlikely to be a nova or comet. Again, I've never heard an astronomer talk like that.


The Celestron was using a 40mm eyepiece for a much wider field of view whereas the smaller Orion had a 15mm eyepiece to pull it in much closer.

This sounds like someone who has just done a search on telescopes and eyepieces.. While the above is true, the actual resulting magnifications are what is important.

The rest of the description just sounds very flaky to me. Seriously, these folk are from an astronomy club, and they use such odd, flowery language? And talk of this isn't all over the 'real' astronomy groups? They don't bother to take some images, not even a digicam thru the eyepiece? Even a consumer videocam would have given some useful footage, and these folk should know how to use such a device properly (manual focus on infinity, manual exposure, tripod mounted..). It sounds as though it was there for some time, and yet they didn't get anything recorded, and there are no other reports? (if it was near to the horizon, then presumably there would have been other locations with a much better/closer view..)

All from an astronomy club... No cameras, ccds, video. (And no names, I note..)

Also, having just checked the yahoo group for that astronomy club, and the home page for the observatory, this (strangely? (O isn't mentioned. I'm emailing the webmaster now to see if we can get this verified..

.. or otherwise.

Sorry, but this just doesn't ring true to me at all.

And I won't even mention the ridiculous bit about not measuring it's 'altitude'... Anyone here who is TRULY an astronomer will know what that term means (hint - angle above the horizon), and why that statement sounds so funny when they were using serious telescopes...

Bzzzt.

But I'll let you know what I find out..

PS...

Just so the full story is out there.. Roger Marsh, who is the 'UFO examiner' for the website breaking the story, also works for MUFON.. He also runs Incahoots.TV (how apt), which is the other site given as a reference. Not that I'm suggesting a conflict of interest, but... hmm.

In the report, Mr Marsh states:

"If Oklahoma MUFON investigates and reports back on this case"

IF? IF???? So am I being presumptive to assume that means they have published this without even the simplest phone call/email to the Astronomy club/Observatory in question? And despite this potentially being a case involving experienced and credible witnesses, it is in doubt whether anyone will actually follow up on it?

I can only think of ONE reason they wouldn't want to follow it up...


And you'll note he doesn't state he *works* for MUFON - wouldn't that have been a rather obvious thing to declare?

I may have a lot more to say about this later, but I hope I am wrong in my suspicions...

Originally posted by Heliocentric
But as we watched it more closely it was very surprising as to the manner in which it morphed into various shapes and sizes. Its brightness would vary some but that was easily seen as being caused by the low-lying clouds on the horizon. As we commonly call it – it was “sitting in the soup”. When they would move in front of it the objects brightness would dim some. Otherwise it would maintain its brightness. That was easily seen via binocular observations.

But as mentioned before it morphed into what was clearly seen and could be interpreted as the same basic outline of the Shuttle that anyone would see as it flies over. Again, the same basic shape as to what you would see looking up at the bottom of it. That distinctive shape was easily recognized. At the rear of it you could see what looked like bluish green waves that would both come and go from the main rear line of the object. Nowhere else was this color and wave seen, just at the rear.

The objects color was a combination of the just mentioned bluish green at the rear to a lighter orange yellow up through the main body and then into red orange, much more intense, than any of the other colors at the top or perhaps, from appearance at that time, leading edge. None of us had ever seen a color distribution of this sort before. Especially on either the Shuttle or any other normal day-to-day satellites. From our position/location it appeared to be hovering over either Bristow, Ok or possibly even Oklahoma City.

There was no attempt by any of us then to determine its specific distance or altitude from us. The same applies to its actual size. Visually, it appeared very similar to the size of Jupiter. Other than that comparison we honestly don’t know either its distance or specific altitude. It remained in the same position for approximately 40 minutes and never moved. Close to 8 P.M. we started to notice what appeared to be a ring of lights that was rotating around the bottom portion. The lights were seen in the same location that the bluish green colored waves were at. Several of us noticed this while looking at it through the telescopes.

Needless to say this was surprising to us all. This carried on for one to two minutes and then suddenly the object started to move. The movement was slow at the beginning but increased very rapidly. I had my eye glued to the 40mm eyepiece when this began and once it started I could not move. Within two seconds it had totally disappeared from open visual sight but I still had a lock on it in the eyepiece. Fast, very fast it moved from dead center in the eyepiece field of view upwards and at the same time was getting smaller and smaller as it flew away. Two or three seconds later it was totally gone from view in either of the telescopes.

For those of you who don't know how these types of space craft work, it's a small "black hole"/vortex that's built up in front of the space craft.
It creates a vacuum like substance, which slowly pulls the craft to faster speeds, as it's built.
A black hole can pull things at very fast speeds; nearly at the speed of light.
These space crafts maintain these vacuum like substance right in front of them; thus pulling them forward at very intense speeds.
Don't take my word for it; that'd be foolish. Look it up yourself. Learn a thing or two.