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(meteorobs) Re: Source of Phoenix, Ariz UFO lights
I was very happy to read about the Phoenix UFO affair from George's post.
Having thought about the possibility of it being a group of planes, I was
thrown off the scent by the insistence of so many people that the lights
were part of one gigantic object. Look at a few pictures on
www.artbell.com; the lights aren't in a straight line or a V. I forwarded
the post to Art ; he especially needs to learn the truth. Unfortunately I
think he will ignore it to keep the mystery going.
Giving a speed and true altitude of an object at night is worse than
unreliable ; it's totally useless. The identical situation applies to
fireballs. The public's knowledge of this is vanishingly close to zero. I
was appalled to snag a non-observing professional astronomer on this point a
few years ago. He received a report from a woman about a fireball landing
(direction NE) in the woods 12 miles east of Gainesville, Florida a few
years ago. Ignoring reports from in town from people who also saw it NE, he
planned a big hunting party for the object the following weekend having
done some preliminary hunting himself. In the meantime I was due to visit
my parents in Gainesville, so I paid him a visit also. Using another report
(seen 110 azimuth) from a pilot over Augusta, Georgia, I showed him that the
true location for a landing would be in the Atlantic off the South Carolina
coast ! Alas, he ignored me and wasted a day's time for a lot of people,
even renting a helicopter at $150/hour to look for broken tree branches.
Back on the UFO crowd, astronomers are most unwelcome around them because
the mysteries are, for the most part, so easy to blow away. Yet astronomers
are considered to be "close-minded" and quick to "explain things away."
These people want to accepted by scientists but first they need to act like
scientists. My encounters with them indicate a dismal ignorance of basic
science and basic astronomy; in addition, they arrogantly refuse to do
anything about it.
Fifty years have passed since I first began looking up, and I have yet to
see a UFO. In 1946-47 I was in a stroller looking at the cobalt sky over
Miami because the beautiful color got my attention. But even in my
pre-astronomy days (before 1955) I saw nothing unusual.
Concerning Phoenix, why did all components of the media chirp about it in
perfect unison on one particular recent day? This was a superb example of
how the media is controlled by just a handful of interlocking corporations,
which in turn are controlled by a handful of elite people. Hence, we get
filtered "news" from an information cartel bent on keeping us pacified.
(Stay with alternative news sources, such as talk radio and newsletters).
The increasing UFO coverage (news and movies) as time passes, I firmly
believe, is aimed at conditioning the public for a major staged event in the
near future, to get us to accept world government and unify to "fight the
invaders." (Ronald Reagan once mentioned this possibility). All the
environmental nonsense has the exact same objective -- radicals completely
run this show and want kids brainwashed with it in school. Invent some
calamity, then provide the solution, and we end up wasting money and giving
up more freedom. The loss of freon over ozone thinning is a gigantic hoax;
so is global warming.
No observing possible here yet, lots of clouds and showers around. Many
nights clear by dawn, not much use. By noon it's getting cloudy again. I
have no meteors since the Eta Aquarids.
Norman
Norman W. McLeod III
Visual Program Coordinator
American Meteor Society
Fort Myers, Florida
nmcleod@peganet.com