UFOs in Reality (6 page)

PHASE 2:
Links with the SUN and the STARS
 

“And there shall be signs in the sun, ….. and in the stars; ………..”

Luke Ch 22, vs.25

This second phase of the story provides information essential to an understanding of how the Astronautical Theory came into being. It explains the logic used and the astronomical basis on which the theory stands. For some readers this could be the most difficult section of the book. It will require concentration and a real determination to understand. For that I must apologise, but
herein lies the evidence for programmed surveillance activity from space, a discovery which demonstrates the existence, in our environment, of extraterrestrial technology far in advance of our own.
. That is why Chapters 5, 6 and 7 could not be merely placed in an appendix – so please read on.

CHAPTER 5
A
WORLD OF VISITATIONS
 

Data Collection and Initial Processing.

The encouraging results from the U.K investigations study inspired me to look at the global situation. Only in that way would it be possible to recognise and define any kind of overall astronautical activity. I needed ready and abundant sources of detailed reports gathered from all over the world and over a long period of time.

Before going on to explain how I collected data for the global study, it is important to stress that many reports of Unidentified
Flying Objects (UFOs) can be explained after careful examination by experienced observers of the skies. Therefore, the acronym ‘UFO’, in my view, should stand for Unidentifiable Flying Objects and such were the reports I sifted out from the sources I examined to provide me with data. I restricted my selection to reports of
Strange Aerial Craft (SAC), or strange lights in the sky behaving in a controlled way and, sometimes, as if they were attached to an unseen craft.

Just as if fate took me in hand at that point in my investigations, a source of data was suddenly offered to me. After an informal presentation of my work had been presented to a Manchester-based research group, DIGAP (Direct Investigation Group for Aerial Phenomena), I was approached by one of those present in the meeting – Mr. Peter Rogerson, a librarian. He was producing an international catalogue of Close Encounter events that covered a period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It was called INTCAT
and it was being issued in serialised form in the Merseyside (Liverpool area) magazine, MUFOB – and he would send me free copies of the magazine as they were issued! That very generous offer was just what was needed to launch me into a new and exciting phase of the study.

Peter was faithful to his word and my data file grew steadily, month by month. Each catalogued report was read carefully and only the most seemingly-genuine ones were selected for the database. Here are two early examples :-

“2 November 1885, dawn, Scutari [Uskudar], Turkey. A luminous object circled the harbour, at altitude 5-6m. It was seen as a blue-green flame which illuminated the whole town. The object then plunged into the sea, after making several circles above the ferryboat pier. Duration 1.5min.”

“12 November 1887, Cape Race (Atlantic Ocean). A huge sphere of light was observed rising out of the ocean by witnesses aboard the “Siberian”. It rose to an altitude of 16m., flew against the wind and came close to the ship, then “dashed off” towards the SE. Duration 5 min. “

Unfortunately, a change in the location of the editorial office caused the issue of MUFOB to be suspended for a long period of time. Editorial policy had changed when the magazine eventually came back into circulation, causing the publication of INTCAT to cease. This meant that the supply of chronologically-ordered data had terminated with reports from September 1954. Another source of data had to be found to speed up the creation of my data file.

Again, fate took a hand, this time through the timely intervention of the then-Secretary of DIGAP, the late Mrs Joan Nelstrop. Remembering my need for data, she handed me a copy of a catalogue of several thousands of reports prepared by an organisation calling itself the National Centre for UFO Reports, based in Staffordshire. It was a wonderful piece of timing – another case of a need being instantly met. The process of sifting through all those reports and selecting the most appropriate ones was a very spare-time consuming business. The period covered by the catalogue was March 1946 to the end of 1971.

From these two sources, only some 450 cases were chosen for processing. The Latitude and Longitude co-ordinates for these events were next plotted onto a graph representing the globe – and various efforts were made to look for meaningful links between the points on the graph; that is, links which might have indicated that an astronautical activity from space might have produced them. These exercises were leading nowhere until I selected a set of reports of objects entering or leaving seas or lakes. At first, I represented the locations of these ‘Water Events’ as generous blobs of plasticine on my young son’s small globe atlas and I was pleased to find I could link them by a series of approximate Great Circles. I then plotted those points on a graph representing the globe and defined the Great Circles (GCs) more accurately.
Fig. 9 shows the picture obtained and the inclinations of the GCs to the Earth’s equator. This seemed to be quite a breakthrough, but GCs are not in themselves indicators of activity from space. Even so, the discovery inspired the next stage in the investigation.

Fig. 9

The Search for Approach Paths from Space

For readers with little or no knowledge of astronomy, Fig. 10 and the following information will aid understanding of all that follows.

For the purposes of observational astronomy, the Earth is envisaged to be rotating about its North-South (polar) axis at the centre of a huge ball, the Celestial Sphere, and the stars are regarded as being painted onto the inside of that ball. As the Earth rotates on its axis, from West to East, once every 23 hrs. and 56 mins. inside the ball, the stars directly overhead change progressively, rising in the East and setting in the West.

Fig. 10

On Earth we locate places by their latitude and longitude co-ordinates relative to the equator and the Greenwich (north-south) meridian. Similarly, astronomers envisage the ball (sphere) of the sky to be given a Celestial Equator (lined up with the Earth’s equator) and
a reference (north-south) meridian located by the position of the Sun among the stars at noon during the Spring Equinox
. The star currently above the Earth’s North Pole (Polaris, the Pole Star) marks, approximately, the Celestial North Pole for astronomers. Equivalent latitude, relative to the celestial equator, is called
Declination
and the equivalent longitude divisions are measured in
hours of Right Ascension, RA.
(1 hour of RA represents 15° of rotation of the sky) and this is measured in hours Right Ascension from the reference
(Spring Equinox)
meridian, in an easterly direction.
In this way, the stars, constellations and distant galaxies have known (fixed) positions in the sky and can be readily identified. The planets and other bodies in our solar system, being much closer to us, are seen to move relative to this fixed background of stars during the course of any year. Our time on Earth is determined by the time taken by a position on the Earth’s surface to move from Noon one day to Noon on the following day, and this takes 24 hours of
Mean Solar Time
. (Notice that this is longer by 4 minutes than the time taken for one revolution of the Earth relative to the stars
(Star
or
Sidereal Time)
and this difference results from the movement of the Earth in its orbit round the Sun.)

Fig. 11

Fig.11 is a diagrammatic representation of the Earth in its orbit round the Sun. As stated in the previous paragraph, in comparison with the movement of the Earth in orbit, the stars are so far away from us that they seem to be fixed in the surrounding sky, no matter where the Earth is placed in its orbit on any given day of the year. The simplest scenario I could envisage was one in which ET craft might approach the Earth from the same direction in space, whatever the time of year, and might then enter into a fixed orbit round the Earth to facilitate visitations to the planet’s surface for a limited period of time. If the plane of the sought-for orbit is considered to be fixed relative to the fixed stars, then a spacecraft following such a path round the world, for
a few hours,
would be seen to pass through the same background of stars on each pass over a given latitude on the Earth directly beneath it. These principles were then used to search for evidence that that kind of surveillance from space had resulted in
sightings of SAC (probes) at locations directly beneath such an orbit
. From the diagram, notice how the orientation of the hypothetical ET craft’s orbit, relative to
the Earth’s terminator
(which marks the separation of day and night), would be affected by the time of year. Therefore, the time of day or night, such an orbiter would be observed from
a given
location directly below it, would depend on the date of the observation.

Clearly, then, the exercise about to be described needed the
timing
of each event, as well as its date and location. That requirement effectively reduced the useable data sample to 368 cases. The numerical breakdown of these events in Northern and Southern Hemispheres is shown by Table 1. They were predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere.