Astronomers and UFOs.

Originally posted by JimOberg
One astronomer-UFO case was cited as

Case 24 Kislovodsk, Caucasus, August 8, 1967 61

Are there any working search engines that could bring a curious reader to the solution?

I found an article written by you in 1982 about a coverup:

The Great Soviet UFO Coverup

The Caucasus apparitions, for example, were described as flying saucers hundreds of yards in diameter.

How's that for taking a quote out of context?

It looks like a good article but I am still reading it.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by JimOberg
One astronomer-UFO case was cited as

Case 24 Kislovodsk, Caucasus, August 8, 1967 61

Are there any working search engines that could bring a curious reader to the solution?

I found an article written by you in 1982 about a coverup:

The Great Soviet UFO Coverup

I guess skywatcher forgot to use the [rant] [/rant] tags?

Jim, I just finished reading your excellent article discussing that case and others in the 1967 Soviet UFO "wave", and hope you don't mind if I pull a couple quotes for comments/questions, starting with the astronomer/UFO link:

Hynek in turn again enthusiastically embraced the report at the Smithsonian UFO Symposium in Washington, D.C., in September 1980, where he stressed the qualifications and scientific credentials of the witnesses: "Forty two percent were made by scientific workers and engineers, and an amazing seven and a half percent were made by astronomers. ...It becomes very much harder, in fact from my personal viewpoint, impossible, to find a trivial solution for all UFO reports

I had the opportunity to take a course taught by the astronomy department at the university I attended, and when I looked through all their courses, I don't remember seeing any courses that talked about how to identify rocket launches. So while I would concede that astronomers are trained observers, what they are trained to observe probably didn't include rockets back then, and perhaps still doesn't. So the fact that they may not be able to identify a rocket launch really doesn't detract from their status as "trained observers" of astronomical objects, since I'm not sure rockets are really considered astronomical objects. So basically I agree with your contention that we really shouldn't raise astronomers (or pilots) up on some kind of pedestal regarding their credibility in UFO sightings.

I have a question about this statement:

Naively, Hynek and Haines interpret the significance of the Soviet study as proving mathematically that UFOs are real, or that "A heretofore unrecognized (by science) phenomenon exists and is worthy of serious study," in their own words. "The conclusions of the Condon Report," they continued, " are thus totally reversed and the UFO phenomenon at one stroke becomes a legitimate subject for serious scientific attention. It is a great blow to the bastion of ridicule which has heretofore been so effective a barrier to the exercise of proper scientific curiosity in this area." Brave words indeed - and as we have seen, once the true nature of the Gindilis Report is revealed, absolutely baseless words as well.

Baseless? Perhaps it's not baseless to say UFOs are a legitimate subject "worthy of serious study", as you yourself point out in the (perhaps somewhat contradictory) statement:

It would be strange if nobody at all in the West noticed the connection between the Soviet FOBS spacecraft tests and UFOs. In fact, many classified intelligence analysts (with the CIA, DIA, or NSA) probably did make the connection.... This plausible scenario provides one reasonable explanation of why the U.S. government really should~ be interested in UFO reports, precisely because they are not "true UFOs" but instead are something else of much greater interest to the agencies in question. Furthermore, the results of these "UFO studies" would necessarily have to remain highly classified. Thus, no "true UFOs" need to be involved to explain government secrecy about some UFO reports it has been interested in.

(bold highlighting mine)
First of all, I never even knew about FOBS so thanks for the education. How did you find out about them in 1982, I thought the Soviet Union still wasn't that open with data back then?

But am I misreading your article by on the one hand saying that an assertion that UFOs are worthy of serious study is baseless and on the other hand saying that "the U.S. government really should~ be interested in UFO reports, precisely because they are not "true UFOs" but instead are something else of much greater interest to the agencies in question"?

I guess part of this boils down to what the definition of a "UFO" is, it may be unidentified to the observer (such as the Soviet astronomer who doesn't have access to the rocket launch schedule), though it may later be identifiable to someone who might have access to such information.

My last question is, were you ever able to identify a specific rocket launch for the non-FOBS Caucasus sighting? You make specific references to the FOBS sightings like:

The exact FOBS missions and the approximate times of their overflights are: Cosmos- 160, May 17 at 8:45 p.m.; Cosmos-169, July 17 at 9:30 p.m.; Cosmos-170, July 31 at 9:30 p.m.; Cosmos-171, August 8 at 8:45 p.m.; Cosmos-178, September 19 at 7:30 p.m.; Cosmos- 179, September 22 at 6:50 p.m. (no reports - it may have been overcast); Cosmos-183, October 18 at 6:10 p.m.; Cosmos-187, October 28 at 5:50 p.m.

I see Cosmos-171 was on August 8th, which explains the sighting referenced on August 8, 1967, but then you mention another Caucasas sighting was not a FOBS launch?

A good example of this problem is a non-FOBS "UFO" seen from a Soviet astronomical observatory in the Caucasus Mountains (the description is from Zigel's article in "Soviet Life"): "...a strange formation (was seen) against a clear starry sky at 2:50 a.m.

You don't mention the date but I take it that was NOT Cosmos-171, any idea what mission number it was?

Thanks again for leading me to the great article, I really enjoyed reading it and learned a lot!