Authors: T.R. Dutton
Neptune
Neptune takes almost 165 years to move round the Sun – so, in any year it seems to be almost stationary in the sky against the fixed stars. In recent years Neptune and Uranus have been situated close to each other in the sky – therefore, both planets might have been expected to have been referenced in, more or less, equal numbers of times throughout the period 1990-1995. This seems to have been borne out by the results. Overall, Neptune has not been referenced appreciably.
Pluto
This planet follows a highly eccentric orbit round the Sun. The orbit is inclined at 17.2° to the Ecliptic Plane and the path followed by Pluto cuts across the orbit of Neptune. The period of rotation round the Sun is some 248 years. Pluto is also a small target for navigational purposes, having a diameter which is only about five-eighths the diameter of the Earth. Nevertheless, it could have been referenced 18 times, even though only once, closely. Its involvement is problematical.
THE MINOR PLANETS
Ceres
This is the largest of the Minor Planets in the Asteroid Belt. It has a diameter of 760 km. and orbits the Sun every 4.6 years. The orbit’s inclination to the Ecliptic is 10.6°. Being so small, it is not an obvious visual beacon to aid astro-navigation, so its alignments with the celestially-defined UFO activity tracks might be only incidental. Even so, as
Table 2
shows, it was signalled 18 times, 11 of those being close alignments, for three of the four track orientations, the exception being 11:00h RA. This raises the question as to whether the smaller bodies of the Solar System are sometimes used as convenient and suitably-aligned staging points on journeys to and from Earth, an idea which seems to be substantiated by all that follows.
Pallas
Pallas, the joint-second largest minor planet, has a period of 4.61 years and an orbit inclination of 34.8°. Perhaps its very inclined orbit was responsible for its not being signalled significantly during this exercise.
Vesta
Vesta has the same diameter as Pallas, but being closer to the Sun, it has an orbital period of 3.63 years. The inclination of the orbit is only 7.1° relative to the Ecliptic Plane – and this could have had some influence on the results obtained for it in
Table 2.
It was
aligned 16 times, but only 7 of those were close alignments. However, 6 of the latter were recorded for Sunset-tracks from the total of 9 for the set with that orientation, which could indicate that Vesta was found to be a useful staging point for such operations during 1957, 1977, 1993 and 1995.
Juno
This is the smallest of the referenced minor planets, having a diameter of only 200 km. The inclination of the orbit is 13° and the period is 4.36 years. Juno was referenced 26 times during this study, variously, for all orientations, and there were 17 close alignments. The fact that it was found to be in alignment with Sunset tracks 13 times during 1993 and twice during 1995, seems to indicate, as with Vesta, a preference for its use as a staging point for Sunset-orientated operations.
COMETS
Comets, whether or not displaying plumes, being very small targets, figured unexpectedly in the alignments registered. The frequent referencing of some of those considered below can be, perhaps, only regarded as further indications that they may be used as convenient staging points, as has been speculated, previously, in Para. 5.1. The long-term comets follow very elongated orbits which are inclined steeply to the Ecliptic Plane. Their points of origin seem to lie somewhere within the plane of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Given these circumstances, to be found among track-alignment bodies close to the Ecliptic, a comet has to be close to cutting the Ecliptic whilst following its inclined path round the Sun. The number of times this occurs in a given period of years will depend on the orbital period of that comet. Since the long-term comets have periods of between 3 and 100 years, they cut through the Ecliptic at intervals of years which are half their orbital periods. In such circumstances it could be expected that the chances against any comet aligning with the fixed star-related track orientations on the Ecliptic Plane would be very high. The terminator-linked tracks, which effectively sweep all round the sky in any year, might be expected to fare better, but the presence of a comet close to the Ecliptic would be the prerequisite feature. The alignments of the comets listed in
Table 2
are considered below.
Hartley 2
(Period: 6.28 years)
This comet had 22 alignments, 12 ‘Close’, registered during the seven years (thirty-eight years’ time-span) considered, a surprisingly large number. It seems to be a strange coincidence that it was found to align with 21:30h RA tracks during 1957, 1977, 1991 and 1992 – and with Sunset tracks during all years except 1957 and 1990. Some of these alignments can be attributed to the opposition of the comet to the Sun in intervening years, but the number of counts is still quite remarkable.
Grigg-Skjellerup
(Period: 5.1 years)
The results for this comet cannot be considered to be significant.
Encke
(Period: 3.28 years)
Encke scored highly with terminator-linked tracks but, during any of the chosen years, did not align with the star-linked ones. From
Table 2
, it showed up especially-well with the Sunrise-linked tracks and, overall, was aligned during the years 1957, 1977, 1991, 1993 and 1995.
Gale
(Period: 11.24 years)
During the astronomical software scans, Gale featured frequently, especially during scans for 1993. With the 21:30h RA orientated tracks it featured 19 times.
Table 2
shows this to have been a significant percentage (46%) of the total of all 41 alignments with that orientation registered for that year. To add to the possible significance of this comet, it also scored 6 (close) 11:00h RA alignments and 3 Sunset ones during 1977. The overall score of 33 was the highest recorded for any of the qualifying bodies, and it was accumulated during the years 1957, 1977, 1992 and 1993.
Machholz
(Period: 5.24 years)
Machholz logged up a score of 9 alignments overall, only 4 of which could be categorised as being ‘close’. It performed best as an 11:00h RA marker during the years 1977, 1992 and 1993 – which may be of some significance.
Halley
(Period: 76.3 years)
The results for this famous comet were not remarkable, other than that 2 of its 3 terminator track alignments were of the ‘close’ variety.
6. Overall Review and Conclusion.
As the discussions in Para 5.2 have adequately demonstrated, this is a difficult exercise to assess. The overall result (
Table 2
) has demonstrated that the reported events, over the period of years considered, have definitely favoured the track orientations 21:30h RA (106 counts) and Sunset (126 counts).
The favoured solar system bodies for the former orientation are shown to have been the Sun, Venus, Mars and, occasionally, the Moon. Alignments with the outer planets can only occur when those slow-moving bodies are in the required zones of the Ecliptic, but there are some indications that they may be referenced in those circumstances. (This applies equally to 11:00h RA tracks.)
During Sunset-orientated operations, it seems that all the major bodies may have been referenced from time to time, as might be expected, and Mercury seems to have figured largely, with 12 close alignments out of 17 in total. Strangely, Mercury was referenced only once as a Sunrise-related marker, so this seems to point towards there being a significant bias.
The overall bias against the Sunrise-related option, which Table 2 clearly reveals, is the result of that option’s not being signalled very frequently during the initial event-processing stage. That applies, similarly, to the smaller numbers of 11:00h RA links than those for the 21:30h RA orientation. But, even so, the evidence suggests that alignment with planets could be generally arbitrary in both Sunrise and 11:00h RA operations – even though Venus showed up well as a Sunrise option.
The featuring of minor planets and comets in this exercise raises the question as to whether such bodies might feature regularly in the operations being investigated – and, if so, are some of them ‘preferred’ bodies. Since they are not necessarily good visual markers, it has been suggested in Section 5 that they might be used as convenient and aligned staging points on journeys to and from Earth. Transient photographic evidence of small companions associated with the asteroid Ida and Comet Hale-Bopp might provide support for that idea.
In summary,
the pilot study just described has provided ample evidence that the positioning of solar system bodies could play a key navigational role during some of the surveillance operations being carried out from extra-terrestrial sources. It has also given insights about the bodies that have been most favoured for the various operations. These insights may help to indicate, during any year, which track orientations are likely to be adopted and so aid the use of the timing predictions graphs already in widespread use.
The rules so far discovered do not help with Sunrise and 11:00h RA predictions, but should help improve 21:30h RA and Sunset predictions, by indicating which days of any year can be regarded as being favourable for direct observation work all over the world.
References
7.1 J. Allen Hynek ‘The UFO Experience – A Scientific Inquiry’
Abelard-Schuman Ltd, 1972. (Book)
7.2 ASTRONOMY (Magazine) August, 1998, Stern, S. Alan. Southwest Research Institute. ‘Baby Bopps?’ p.24
William K. Hartmann. ‘The Great Solar System Revision’ p.44
End of Main Report
© T.R.Dutton, October, 1999
Appendix
Close examination of all processed CE3 and CE4 cases
in the database at November, 2000.
©
T.R. Dutton, November
,
2000
APP. 1 Introduction.
Twenty seven Close Encounter cases involving alleged encounters with alien creatures had been processed and had been included in the Correlated Tracks Database listing by the end of October, 2000. However, as this additional alignments exercise progressed, further details became available on the controversial Roswell (New Mexico, USA) crash event of 1947, which (several witnesses of that time had alleged) had involved the retrieval of alien bodies. The new information received supplied both a
date
and a
time
for the crash event, which enabled it to be processed through the programs described in the main report. As the given time was in close agreement with predictions for that date, the Roswell event qualified for tentative inclusion in the database listing, and consideration of the case was then added to the end of this CE3/CE4 exercise. As previously (in the main report), solar system bodies in close alignment with the tracks linked closely to each event, by date and time, were sought for, using the Expert Astronomer software. The outcome of this exercise is summarised by
Appendix Sheets 1 to 7
, but that summary is preceded by
Appendix Figs. 1 to 4
. These have been introduced to give better understanding of those important features of the Astronautical Theory which were described in the main report.
APP. 2 Basics and the definition of star-linked tracks (Appendix Fig. 1)
App.
Fig 1
basically depicts the Northern and Southern aspects of the Heavens, as presented in most astronomical text books. Each circular diagram represents a flattened view of each hemisphere of the sky. The outer boundaries represent the celestial equator, which is an extension, into the sky, of the Earth’s equatorial plane. Similarly, the centres of these diagrams are directly above the true North and South Poles of the Earth, respectively.