UFOs in Reality (7 page)

In order to minimise the time required for the exercise, (which throughout, was NOT computerised) another expedient was adopted – the timings of events would be adjusted so that they would correspond to
Mean Solar Time
at each location on ten specific dates of the year.
The equally-spaced fireball dates , as listed previously in Chapter 4,
were chosen for that purpose
.
The reason for this decision needs to be understood. It has to be explained that events on the Earth were about to be linked to the stars in a meaningful astronomical way. Rather than having to examine every case on whatever day of the year it had occurred, which would have involved a lot of manual calculations, I decided instead to adjust the Local Time
(Mean Solar Time)
of each event by four minutes for every day its date was different from the nearest nominal (fireball) date. This would ensure that the same stars would be overhead at the ADJUSTED time on the nominal date as were overhead at the REAL time on the actual date.

The Phase 1 study had indicated that the small craft witnessed in Close Encounters had been too small to be space cruisers. It followed that they had been delivered and would be retrieved by large cruisers, probably established in
short-term
orbits or
partial
orbits. The search was about to begin for evidence to substantiate that idea.

My hope was that by linking the stars that were immediately overhead at the time of each Close Encounter event, the linked points would be found to form arcs of Great Circles fixed in space, perhaps indicating the existence of a number of fixed orbital paths.

CHAPTER 6
C
ELESTIAL CONNECTIONS
 

“…. how many ways are above the firmament,….?”

ESDRAS II Ch. 4 v. 5

First Indicators

The search for the astronomical and astronautical connections had begun in earnest. Having corrected all the data in the way described in Chapter 5, and lacking any computer aids, the next thing to do was to plot out some graphs. Figs.12(a) and 12(b) show the results of that exercise. As explained previously, the search was on for bits of Great Circle hoops in the sky. The curved lines passing through the points on these graphs show that
I found them
!

The points on each graph refer to the
Latitude (Declination in the sky above the location)
, plotted on the vertical scale, and
Mean Solar Time
(measured on the horizontal scale) of each selected Close Encounter (CE) event. The curved lines represent arcs of Great Circles, distorted and split by being shown against a
flattened
Celestial Sphere
, as drawn on flat graph paper. From these graphs some very important observations could be made. They indicated that orbits with ten distinct inclinations to the Equator had been used (including those revealed by the Water Events exercise), sometimes over long periods of years –- and that some of those orbits, shown at different times of year, were linked to the same stars. This latter clue was particularly exciting, because there was a possibility that it might indicate where the visitors were coming from. So, that was the next idea to be explored.

Fig.12a

Fig 12b

As a means of identifying each one of the curves shown on the graphs, the Latitude (or Declination) and the Mean Solar Time of the
northern-most point
on each curve was read and listed at the date of that particular graph. The
identifier
points read off were then plotted on another graph (Fig.13 ) from which other star connections could be sought. But there was a totally unexpected bonus in store for me. As will be explained,
I discovered that many of those tracks in the sky had often been linked to the position of the Sun!

Fig. 13

The sloping straight line drawn on this Fig 13 graph of Mean Solar Time vs Days of the Year, are lines of
constant Sidereal Time
(constant star time) and they slope downwards to the right at a rate of -4 minutes per day. (As explained previously, this effect is caused by the Earth’s movement in its orbit round the sun during the course of any year.) Overall, the slope is approximately -24 hours per year. The
identifier
points were superimposed onto this graph, as shown, and some interesting trends were observed. It was found that the best fit of sloping lines linking the points on this graph divided the 24-hour days into 22 equally spaced lines, the spacing between them being
65.45 minutes
. There were little clusters of points spaced in that way but it was observed that these points represented events widely separated from each other by, sometimes, periods of many decades, so clear links with particular parts of the sky or indications of orbital activity were not readily recognisable. Further close study of the pattern of points, however, suggested that paths with inclinations to the equator
between 52 and 54 degrees
had perhaps been linked to the Earth’s
northern sunset terminator
at those latitudes. This observation was confirmed after a curve representing the appropriate sunset times throughout the year had been superimposed on the graph, as shown. It was not clearly evident that the northern sunrise had also been referenced in that way. Overall, the sidereal study had produced a totally unexpected result. It had demonstrated that the idea that there might be only one fixed-in-space approach path was a gross over-simplification of the situation. This discovery was not unexpected, but the observed link with the position of the sun among the stars
seemed to suggest that the probes had been accessing the Earth from bases within the Solar System over a long period of years.

CHAPTER 7
P
ATHWAYS OVER THE EARTH
 

Up to this point in the investigation, Great Circles in space had been considered, these being supposed to represent the paths followed by the visiting spacecraft. But
when a craft is moving in orbit round the world, its path over the ground beneath it is a helical (spiralled) one
. This is the result of the relative speeds of the satellite and the rotating Earth below it. During one rotation of the satellite, the position on the equator passed over initially becomes displaced by the number of degrees of the Earth’s rotation corresponding to the time taken by the satellite to complete a single orbit. A typical low altitude satellite takes about 90 minutes to complete one orbit. In that time, the Earth’s surface rotates 22.5 degrees to the west of the original crossover point on the equator. This is clearly seen on NASA’s and Russian projections of the Earth, which show the successive paths (ground tracks) followed over the surface of the planet as a given spacecraft (say, the Space Shuttle) continues to orbit. The time taken for one orbit is referred to as the
period
of any satellite, and this becomes greater than 90 minutes if the height of the satellite above the Earth is significantly greater than a nominal one of, say, 100 miles.

My next step was to look for signs of spiralling lines linking the geographical locations of the reported SAC encounters
.
Considering the 90-minute satellite as the fastest likely to be encountered, I began curve matching using tracing paper with lines representing orbital ground tracks for different natural orbital periods. This turned out to be a fruitless exercise until, out of desperation, I tried
a period of 65.45 minutes
. Almost instantly, UFO-event locations on the Earth began to be linked up in significant numbers! Very soon I was able to identify 34 well-aligned sets and then went on to identify a further 32 –— 66 in all. Table 2 lists them, in the order in which they were identified. Ground tracks numbered 5, 10, 11 15 and 27 were found to represent five of the Water Events GCs, except that they were now spiralled lines. It is also important to notice that
some intersections with the Earth’s equator were shared by tracks having different inclinations
, emphasising the importance and fixed nature of the equatorial intersections.

When a computer graphics representation of these tracks (Fig.14) was produced by professional colleagues in the Computer Services Department of HSA Ltd., Woodford, as a trainee exercise, using available 3D global software, another important feature of these discoveries became apparent. It was noticed that when the limited ground track arcs were extended to represent complete orbits, the end of one track often linked up at the equator with the beginning of another, this indicating that continuous orbiting might have been carried out.