Page Content (OCR)
With his letter to the Scientific American, Harrison sent a description and a sketch. He described it as looking like a planetary nebula, which has but slight resemblance to a comet, or any other celestial object. To us, however, there is value in his drawing. A planetary nebula is almost circular, and certainly not flat on one side. This object looked organic. We are vaguely reminded of some of the shapes of pyramids, bells, pears, etc., which have been reported for generations. Clearly a nebulous or gaseous object, freely suspended in space, would assume a symmetrical shape and fuzzy edges. This thing did neither. Its appearance alone indicates that it was a UFO. Its motion clinches the argument. There are other similar reports in history of astronomy, but this one can be our prototype. It should be a classic, not only of observation but of how an inhabited and regimented science can pass up the most spectacular of discoveries It is just possible that this is the most important _and_ revolutionary telescopic observation ever published, especially if we place as high a value on discovering and contacting a new racial intelligence as we do on finding new nebulae a few million lights years distant. Before you get excited about that harmless little table of figures, and complain that I'm turning technical, | will give a modicum of explanation. Right Ascension (usually abbreviated RA) is the astronomer's technical way of locating an object eastward among the stars, from an arbitrarily selected point in the sky, and corresponds to longitude on the earth's' surface. Declination is the distance north or south of the celestial equator, and corresponds to latitude on the earth's surface. It really is not nn ree complicated. We will better understand Harrison's observation if we realize that an object hovering directly overhead will move among the stars at a rate of one minute of RA in one minute of time. Imagine yourself lying under a tree at night looking upward at the stars. As the earth turns on it axis the twigs above you move slowly eastward across the stars at exactly one minute of RA per minute of time. Harrison's object was moving approximately three times that quickly. These figures of Harrison's are the very thing for which UFO protagonists have been praying. They are the scientific pay-off! Three minutes of RA per one minute of time is much too rapid for a comet, and the object didn't even look like a comet. Such a speed is_impossibly slow for a meteor, not even a fraction of one per cent of meteoric velocity; and it certainly has less resemblance to a meteor than almost anything you could name. A comet very close to earth could move that rapidly, but a comet_would not make sudden changes in direction. Under the laws of gravitation it could not. It is important to note that during the first three hours the object did not move in declination. Hence it was not moving in a great circle, but around a parallel of declination, which in turn means that it was moving straight eastward, which, except at the equator, is impossible for uncontrolled motion — so it was directed. So What. But, then, it suddenly changed from one declination to another — an impossible maneuver for an uncontrolled body! Mag. "“deadfall" cut-out field controller would be considered a Crack-Pot Idea even if it is’ the only chance to catch one. Must Cut Mag. field intaki 1 Italic by Jemi 148 Yeah, IF. Well, Nobody's interested. Catch one of them A Magnetic "Net" will do.