Astronomers are just as crazy as UFO spotters….maybe more so

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

Noted British astronomer, John Herschel, son of the equally famous William Herschel, was lauded in his time and today:

In 1831 the honor of knighthood was conferred on him by King William IV, and two years later he again received the recognition of the Royal Society by the award of one of their medals for his memoir "On the Investigation of the Orbits of Revolving Double Stars." The award significantly commemorated his completion of his father's discovery of gravitational stellar systems by the invention of a graphical method whereby the eye could as it were see the two component stars of the binary system revolving under the prescription of the Newtonian law. [From NNBD.com]

But, as the 1952 The Mystery of Other Worlds Revealed, edited by Lloyd Mallan, has it, in an article by M. Frederic Sanchez, Ph.D. [Page 60], Sir John said he saw creatures on the Moon in 1835, using his father’s gigantic telescope (pictured below this Bettmann Archive reproduction of Sir John’s observed creatures):

 

What sane person would say they saw such beings, using a telescope, admittedly grand but hardly able to discern such a detailed, imagined panorama?

But more recently (1924), astronomer R. J. Trumpler drew the canals of Mars that he saw through his telescope [from Max Miller’s Flying Saucers: Fact or Fiction, 1957, Page 60]:

Astronomers are a goofy lot, as I discovered when J. Allen Hynek said, in 1966, that Frank Mannor’s flying saucer was “swamp gas.”

UFO mavens and astronomers, it seems, come from the same obtuse DNA stock.

RR

More about the Gilles Fernandez Airship

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

Max B. Miller, in his 1957 mag/book, Flying Saucers: Fact or Fiction, had this about airships:

On the 22^nd and 30^th of November, 1896, a “cigar-shaped object with stubby wings”…appeared and was viewed by thousands of residents over the areas of Oakland. San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Chico, and other cities of Central California. But not until the following year did the phenomena receive nation-wide import and renown.

On March 29, 1897. Omaha reported a similar object, and Denver on the 30^th.

Kansas City reported a “mysterious light” on April 1^st. “It was directed toward the earth, traveling east at a rate of sixty miles an hour,” reported the New York Sun.

By April 9^th, newspaper accounts had been dispatched from Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

During the night of April 9-10, at Chicago until 2 a.m., “thousands of amazed spectators,” said the New York Herald on the 14^th, “declared that the lights seen in the northwest were those of an airship, or some floating object….Some declare they saw two cigar-shaped objects and great wings.” And this was five years before the Wright Brothers made their historic flight in a h heavier-than-air craft. The Herald, of April 12^th, reported the “cigar-shaped” object and framework had been photographed by a Chicagoan. [Page 10, Bold type, mine.]

Is this that photograph?

A 1910 photo by famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz of a “dirigible” (or so it is thought to be):

RR

Gilles Fernandez finds an explanation for the 1890's Airship sightings?

Our French colleague and friend Gilles Fernandez (pictured above) sent us this request:

Hello Rich.

Look at these 2 links [and] notice the date anterior to November 1896. (The airship wave started in November at Sacramento, no?). The patent was filed April 1896 [and] accepted August 1896. In the second link, it was in the newspaper, September 1896. You can use for your blog and asking what you want, dear friend. I will be interested to have the feedback and ruminations of your readers, as yourself. (I think it has been already presented in Busby book titled " Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery". )


Amitiés,
Gilles

Click HERE to see the patent.

Here's the newspaper article:



Click HERE for a readable copy of the newspaper article.

Any thoughts on the possibility that this patented "airship" accounted for the many sightings of mysterious ariships in the late 1890s and early 1900s?

Jerome Clark and Lucius Farish have provided scholarly research about the airship mystery in various UFO magazines and venues. We've noted those articles here and our RRRGroup blog. Jose Caravaca has also provided extensive material about the airship wave.

Gilles' find supplements the belief that the airships were human inventions.

RR

Some of the Roswell debris on Mars?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4580277/Curiosity-rover-finds-shiny-object-on-Mars.html

Three Examples of Jose Caravaca's Distortion Theory

Our colleague, Spanish UFO researcher, Jose Antonio Caravaca has provided three examples of UFO encounters that support his Theory of Distortion.

Click HERE to access his blog for his latest posting.

Betty Hill's Recollection of Alien Symbols

Terry the Censor provided a linked image of Betty Hill's note about the "writing" she saw on a "book" in the alien craft that allegedly abducted her and her husband, Barney.

Here's Betty's remembrance:



Terry notes that this aspect of the purported Hill encounter hasn't received much ufological attention. Why not?

We are absorbed by the small residue of extraterrestrial symbols, most hoaxed, admittedly, but think the Zamora-seen insignia is significant to the denouement of that event.

Did Betty Hill actually see/remember, under hypnosis, alien writing? And if so, can it be deciphered? Or is it a mental confabulation (from within Ms. Hill's fervid mind)?

We don't think the Hill's created a hoax. They had a "real" experience, the nature of which is still open to scrutiny and discussion. We think the Hills were involved in a folie a deux brought on by something unusual that  triggered their incident, which, at its base, was an hallucinated experience.

That said, the perceived "symbolic writing" remains interesting, from a psychological standpoint or, if you must, a remnant of an extraterrestrial culture.

Also, why has this element of the Hill story been suppressed by advocates of the alien abduction explanation for the Hill tale, Stanton Friedman among them?

Terry the Censor, we think, and we would like to know...

RR

A Defense of Nostalgia

Previously I had posted a broadside about how many UFO mavens are locked into music and remembrances of their past -- an obsessional resort to nostalgic times and events.

Steve Penhollow, the entertainment reporter for Fort Wayne Indiana's morning daily, The Journal Gazette, wrote a defense of nostalgia in the (October 7th) Sunday edition of the paper:

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20121007/FEAT0108/310079987

It's a good offset of my perverse view.

RR