Extreme observatory in the Antarctic: what are they looking for?

This photo from earlier this year was taken by a professional photographer in Christchurch, New Zealand. Christchurch is at a very southern location of 43 degrees S latitude. Is it possible that an object in our skies is more readily viewable from southern locations? If you read the blog from the link attached, you will find locals complaining about extreme chemtrail skies as though there was something to hide. Sunrise and sunset are mentioned as points of specific concentration. Expense is also mentioned because the planes are claimed to be foreign.

poleshift.ning.com...

Here follows a short detail of who, what, when, where, why, how and say what on the extreme conditions observatory nearing completion or completed (who knows?) on the Antarctic Plateau at the South Pole. Is there a connection or is it coincidence? Are we tracking something or just star gazing? See the say what portion for the wacky items I found.

WHO: Researchers, scientists, universities and extreme weather survivalists from China, the U.S., the U.K., and Australia with France and Italy and others putting together an observatory on the Antarctic Plateau near the South Pole.

WHAT: A fully robotic extreme observatory that will operate without anyone there for up to 12 months at a time sending back signals via the Iridium satellite network. 7 telescopes with more in the works are part of this set-up on the Antarctic PLATeau called PLATO.

WHEN: Now. Some beginnings for site testing in 1994 and on since then.

WHERE: The Antarctic Plateau at 81.5 degrees South and 73.5 degrees East at a height of 13,297 feet or 4,053 meters. The average winter temperature is -94 degrees F or -70 degrees C. It hardly ever snows here and there is never any wind. It's the coldest and driest place on earth with air pressure barely half of that at sea level. It can get as cold as -130 degrees F. It's an 18 day journey to the nearest existing research station.

WHY: Get space-quality images without the cost of launching a telescope. Look for the dimming of a stars' light as a planet passes in front of it. Look for the brightening of a stars' light as gravity from something affects it. Discover extra solar planets the size of Neptune and have a chance of finding earth-size planets. The atmosphere is clear and stable with no dust and the region is geologically stable. Water vapor that could turn into precipitation is low.

HOW: Powered by solar panels in summer and diesel engines in winter. Telescope arrays will generate continuous movies every 20 seconds lasting 4 months. A 20 degree patch of southern sky toward the South Pole will be the subject. Telescopes each have a different filter for observing in a different color or wavelength.

SAY WHAT??: The 7 telescopes are 14.5 centimeters in diameter (4 of them) and 1/2 meter (3 of them.) Plans for a 4-5 meter telescope and a 10 meter telescope are being tossed around. A 2.5 meter is supposed to be ready by 2012. Puny?? Tests using an infrared photometer showed that for infrared and millimeter wavelengths a S. Pole location is better than any other on earth. Previous tests at the S. Pole had indicated that seeing at the S. Pole Station is nearly twice as bad as at mid-latitude telescope locations. Now, however, it is supposedly 2-3 times clearer than mid-latitudes. What happened to cause this 180 degree turn around? Climate change or...? Looking for planets occulting stars or brightening them as they pass. Needle in a haystack business unless you know where to look. Looking at a 20 degree portion of sky to the south toward the pole. This seems to be it!! It's about as southern as you can get from earth!! Is this an oops moment or??!!...you tell me.

www.azocleantech.com...

reply to post by luxordelphi


Thats an easy one they are looking for Nubiru still. She is here still and will be for some time. Lets hope she means us know harm like they say.

Nubiru is a GF mothership inside a brown dwarf. 100 different races onboard etc if you take the working of people like Jelaila Starr from the Niburian council.

To be honest i think some of her info seems quite accurate and makes sense especially if you read the whole site. We know the GF is real. Alex Collier and all the other contactees will all tell you that.

The Summerians talked alot about Nubiru.

Until I see a photo with the Sun blocked out eliminating any possibility of a lens flare or reflection, I will cry HOOOOOOOAAAAAAAX!!!!!!

Now, that said, I am planning a trip down to Australia/New Zealand (Christchurch is on the list) this coming year to see the eclipse. So I will be definitely taking photos of a completely blocked out sun. I expect to see some stars maybe, maybe a planet from our own solar system, but that is it.
I have to ask you…why do you believe this or want to believe this? What have you done to prove this theory?

I took this pic myself....big time lens flare...I think that's what the OP post shows too. The telescope news is interesting though...even just to observe the real planets.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/61cd656c3dbe.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by abeverage


I agree with this. I have been searching for the video, but there is one that explains "the second sun" lens flare phenomena by using just a finger to blot out the sun. The "second sun/nibiru" wont get blocked out and appear still in front of the thumb blocking the sun. It was a very simple explanation and now videos seem to be the only way to prove it is a second sun with this easy test.

Any updated articles on this lab would be helpful. I tried searching but found all old articles and things that led to nibiru conspiracies.

reply to post by luxordelphi

The photo is of the Sun with a lens flare.

Now, on to the "meat" of your post.

Previous tests at the S. Pole had indicated that seeing at the S. Pole Station is nearly twice as bad as at mid-latitude telescope locations. Now, however, it is supposedly 2-3 times clearer than mid-latitudes. What happened to cause this 180 degree turn around?

There is no "turn around", there is a different location. The Dome C location is at a higher elevation than the South Pole station and experiences different conditions.

Previous testing at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has, however, demonstrated
poor seeing, averaging 1.8 arcsec (refs 6, 7). Here we report observations of the wintertime seeing from Dome C (ref. 8), a high point on the Antarctic plateau at a latitude of 75º S. The results are remarkable: the median seeing is 0.27 arcsec, and below 0.15 arcsec 25 per cent of the time. A telescope placed at Dome C would compete with one that is 2 to 3 times larger at the best mid-latitude observatories, and an interferometer based at this site could work on projects that would otherwise require a space mission.

www.phys.unsw.edu.au...

reply to post by frenzy4444


Thanks for your on topic reply. I've heard that one test of sanity is how long it takes a person to respond to a direct question. You pass and thanks for your input. I've come across a lot of explanations for what they're looking for, some of the most bizarre from the most conservative sources and I haven't ruled anything out yet.

Not this thread again.... I don't want to get into WHY they put up observatories in extreme areas of the globe Good clear weather is one reason, another is elevation, then the real estate factor of "Location, Location, Location"
If i were an astronomer I would want to get myself as far away as I could from bumbling pseudo-scientists spouting 2012 doomsday propaganda.

I don't even know why I bother with replying to these types of threads anymore. Here's a question, if they KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that a giant planet was coming to end the world why bother putting up another telescope to watch some fake planet come to hit us? What would be the point?

Now you have people saying "It won't hit us, just flip our magnetic poles." Well thats a great theory. But this link here kinda makes that point mute.
Unless the planet was a giant ball of iron and highly magnetized (Even then it would be highly unlikely) it wouldn't do a single thing. Ohh the magnetic poles shifted....wow ok but the magnetosphere is still there..so what was the point again? Ohh something about a solar flare and winds with radiation killing us all...So not only would this planet have to flip the poles.. we would have to have some sort of massive CME directed right at us to really feel any effects of it, even then the atmosphere would still be in place to protect us.

Or maybe because there is so damn much light pollution in the rest of the world the only place remote enough to go to do ground based observations is in ANTARCTICA! A satellite can cost near billions where a land based observatory even in Antarctica could only cost multi-millions even fully staffed!

To me this sort of idea of Nibiru hiding shows a lack of scientific understanding of how an orbit works not to mention how the earth moves around the sun. Makes me sad really because it plays on peoples lack of knowledge and reasoning.

Not to mention if shows up in a Southern latitudes why would it not be picked up by SOHO???
sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...

reply to post by luxordelphi


O. M. G.

This photo from earlier this year was taken by a professional photographer in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Yeah.....and I looked at the link, where someone added arrows and junk, pointing at the little "blob" just "under" the Sun. But, you ask this:

Is it possible that an object in our skies is more readily viewable from southern locations?

Which indicates that you still don't understand our skies, and the various relationships of what can, and can not be seen at any given time of day, from either hemisphere. Nor, is there any apparent understanding of the differences in DISTANCE that also matters.

Stars. Very, very far away. Simply due to the fact of the geometry, there are some stars unable to ever be seen from the Northern hemisphere - just as some cannot be seen from the South.....all depending on one's actual latitude location.

However, when talking about objects IN our Solar System, this is entirely different. Can they see the Sun, from the Southern hemisphere? I hope your answer is "yes".

Now.....please try to understand this by reading very carefully: IF there were actually a bright object in the proximate relative position to the Sun as is "pointed to" in that blog article photos.....read clearly:

It would look EXACTLY the same to all of us up here in the Northern hemisphere!!

There is nothing there. It is a camera artifact. Period.

If you read the blog from the link attached, you will find locals complaining about extreme chemtrail skies as though there was something to hide.

(sigh)...."chemtrails" do not exist. The "locals" are mistaken, and displaying some gross levels of ignorance.

"Something to hide" is ludicrous, in its inanity.

Sunrise and sunset are mentioned as points of specific concentration.

Ah, gee...not this again?! Some clouds and contrails are up in the sky at around 6 to 7 AM, and from where a person views them, they happen to be eastward from her location. SO.....yeah, the Sun is over there too!!

Opposite example at the times of sundown. Gosh, this is also so nonsensical......and why must it be pointed out that, for people NOT in the same location as the one just mentioned above....THEY see an entirely different view!! The relationship of where the clouds and contrails are, compared to the Sun.

(THEY move, the Sun doesn't of course. It's called "perspective"..Or, "point-of-view").

Expense is also mentioned because the planes are claimed to be foreign.

Oh, hard to imagine that many airlines from all over the world happen to go to Christchurh, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia....so, therefore it "must" be some sort of "plot", huh?

A little common sense, please.....

Originally posted by topherman420
reply to post by abeverage

 

I agree with this. I have been searching for the video, but there is one that explains "the second sun" lens flare phenomena by using just a finger to blot out the sun. The "second sun/nibiru" wont get blocked out and appear still in front of the thumb blocking the sun. It was a very simple explanation and now videos seem to be the only way to prove it is a second sun with this easy test.

Any updated articles on this lab would be helpful. I tried searching but found all old articles and things that led to nibiru conspiracies.

Yes when there is video or photos like this I will gladly be the first to say "WHOOPS! I was wrong" and then find the nearest bunker...LOL But I am rarely wrong...except for that one time but that was wrong about being wrong...

reply to by ProudBird



Thank you ProudBird for being able to think critically and use that blob of gray matter inside your cranium.

When this whole "2012" Planet X, Nibiru, etc.. stuff came out I too was a little on the panic button at any new thing that looked "Scientifically official". Then with the power of the internet and the use of my own brain, and a good bit of help from my friends in a small astronomers group I attend every month, my worry was soon quashed with the voracity of an H-bomb.

Originally posted by abeverage
Or maybe because there is so damn much light pollution in the rest of the world the only place remote enough to go to do ground based observations is in ANTARCTICA! A satellite can cost near billions where a land based observatory even in Antarctica could only cost multi-millions even fully staffed!

To me this sort of idea of Nibiru hiding shows a lack of scientific understanding of how an orbit works not to mention how the earth moves around the sun. Makes me sad really because it plays on peoples lack of knowledge and reasoning.

Not to mention if shows up in a Southern latitudes why would it not be picked up by SOHO???

edit on 1-12-2011 by abeverage because: (no reason given)

Thank you for adding the light pollution thing. For lack of a better term, I "Spaced" it.

Second line?

reply to post by luxordelphi


Now.....to ANSWER your "specific" question:

Extreme observatory in the Antarctic: what are they looking for?

"what" they are looking for is extra-solar planets. They do this, by studying distant stars, and their behavior. It is all explained in the very source that you linked!

SO, I must ask a question, now:

Did you even read the source?? Because, when asking a question about a subject that has the answers already in it, is confusing to most rationally-minded people.......

In case you missed it, some snippets:

“We will be able to study the variability of the stars and search for planets around those far-away stars.”

Also, if you look at the article a bit more you can notice the dates from it....it is over 3 years old, at least. It even says, later on:

The facility must operate completely unattended until the Chinese expeditioners return in January 2009...

So....the question again: Did you read the source?

Another reason they would want to have a telescope out there is because of pure visibility....the most pristine conditions....no lights and a perfect open view.... etc

reply to post by abeverage


Thanks for your opinions. And bon voyage with your travels to southern regions.

I have to ask you…why do you believe this or want to believe this? What have you done to prove this theory?

I don't really have a theory. I just have observations with no explanation to fit them all. In this particular thread I'm wondering what is going on at the South Pole. What are they looking for with those puny telescopes?

A satellite can cost near billions where a land based observatory even in Antarctica could only cost multi-millions even fully staffed!

This operation is robotic because it is not possible to staff it because the conditions are so extreme. The money spent on this operation SO FAR is considerable and not nearly over.

To me this sort of idea of Nibiru hiding shows a lack of scientific understanding of how an orbit works not to mention how the earth moves around the sun. Makes me sad really because it plays on peoples lack of knowledge and reasoning.

The telescope array is taking movies every 20 seconds of the same 20 degree part of the sky for 4 months at a time. This is how this non-orbiting array is set up to work. How would this work in orbit?

Not to mention if shows up in a Southern latitudes why would it not be picked up by SOHO???

This is a good question although I don't think it's the sun they're aiming at but I don't know. If it is...why is it needed? I'm mystified along with you.

Originally posted by luxordelphi
This photo from earlier this year was taken by a professional photographer in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Try as I might, I cannot actualy find a link to any professional photographer in Christchurch called Sandi Nicole -
eg through variations of this google search or this one

or in christchurch yellow page listings for photographers

And there are only 2 results for "Nicole" in Chch white pages!!

Christchurch is at a very southern location of 43 degrees S latitude.

43 south is hardly "very southern" - it is closer to the equator than the pole!

Is it possible that an object in our skies is more readily viewable from southern locations? If you read the blog from the link attached, you will find locals complaining about extreme chemtrail skies as though there was something to hide. Sunrise and sunset are mentioned as points of specific concentration. Expense is also mentioned because the planes are claimed to be foreign.

Yes - uninformed nonsense exists in my old haunts too

I lived in Christchurch for some years, and there were plenty of contrails from domestic airlines. The city also gets glorious sunsets from some combinations of the Southern Alps and the Nor' West Arch (lenticular clouds created by westerly flow over them).

I don't really have a theory. I just have observations with no explanation to fit them all. In this particular thread I'm wondering what is going on at the South Pole. What are they looking for with those puny telescopes?

Did you look for an answer?

An extensive sky survey was completed in its first year, even with those puny telescopes.

During 2008, CSTAR 1 performed almost flawlessly, acquiring more than 0.3 million i-band images for a total integration time of 1728 hr during 158 days of observations. For each image taken under good sky conditions, more than 10,000 sources down to ~16th magnitude could be detected. We performed aperture photometry on all the sources in the field to create the catalog described herein. Since CSTAR has a fixed pointing centered on the south celestial pole (decl. = -90°), all the sources within the FOV of CSTAR were monitored continuously for several months. The photometric catalog can be used for studying any variability in these sources, and for the discovery of transient sources such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and minor planets.

authors.library.caltech.edu...

Conclusions of 2008-year Photometry
Aperture photometry for brightest 10,000 stars (i

reply to post by StealthyKat

I took this pic myself....big time lens flare...I think that's what the OP post shows too. The telescope news is interesting though...even just to observe the real planets.

The picture I posted was tested in this way:

I have spent the last 4 hours photographing the sun. At first I had the camera on auto and was not looking into the lens, as the sun here in New Zealand is intensely bright. I grabbed my sunglasses and had a look through my canon digital SLR camera, and well I couldn’t believe it! I could see a perfectly circular object, slightly red in colour compared to the sun. I couldn’t fully believe what I was seeing so called my partner to confirm what I was seeing. He too saw it.

Please note that I am a professional photographer and processed these photos to check the object was not a sun spot or sun glare. Plus the fact that I could see it, not with a naked eye but through the lens, I really can’t believe I have seen it for myself!

poleshift.ning.com...

Thanks for your contribution. I think that if they just wanted to observe the planets they would not focus on a 20 degree section of sky on the hope and prayer that a planet woud wander into that space. Just saying.

Another reason they would want to have a telescope out there is because of pure visibility....the most pristine conditions....no lights and a perfect open view.... etc

So Mt. Everest would be a perfect spot too by these standards. I think they're about the same height and the summit is a lot closer to civilization than an 18 day journey. There are plenty of HUGE telescopes around the world on mountain tops with perfect conditions already set up. Why this extreme mountain top?

reply to post by luxordelphi

So Mt. Everest would be a perfect spot too by these standards. I think they're about the same height and the summit is a lot closer to civilization than an 18 day journey.

Not quite. Don't you ever bother to look anything up?

Mt. Everest: 8850 meters
PLATO: 4093 meters.

Yes, the summit of Everest is a pleasant stroll.