Page Content (OCR)
Tebbutt then goes on to point out that the comet was only sixteen minutes of arc south of the star 8 Leporis when observed by Bone, and that at about that very moment the comet was being compared with that star by the astronomers at Melbourne only a few miles away. He says that the last of Mr. White's comparisons must have corresponded very closely with Dr. Bone's observation, and that Mr. White did not see any such object as was described by Dr. Bone. So great was the interest in the debate that the editor of Nature, March 30, 1882, made another comprehensive survey of all available reports, including a very able defense on the part of Dr. Gould, acted as arbitrator and tried to calm the troubled waters. This controversy must have appeared to contemporaries as a tempest in a teapot, and perhaps meaningless, but to us, of the UFO age, it is important, for it represents real observations bearing on a real problem. The Editor's dissertation is long and somewhat technical. Too much so for our use here. It boils down to a rather hesitant conclusion that Tebbutt's explanation of Gould's observation is the most reasonable one available, and poor Dr. Bone is pushed aside, with the assumption that he used the star 8 Leporis for comparison and was deceived by differential refraction of light in the earth's atmosphere. It was considered that Bone's object simply could not have existed without being noticed by the professionals at Melbourne, neglecting the fact that Bone estimated the brightness at thirty times as bright as 8 Leporis and of definitely disclike shape and size. June 23 Ly AM Ss. me 27 fA oy a PM OW, E%0 Ful, 1AM YW. “Wr, "42330 PY 1 AM . ¥. uly 7 7350 PM OW. ll Fl July 7 s, No one was happy about this tentative settlement, but Dr. Bone saw something-nobody denied that. He describes what he saw as discoid. A comet does rot have a disclike appearance even under good "seeing’ conditions, and under adverse conditions a star becomes comet-like rather than discoid, due to haze and turbulence. We have to conclude that Dr. Bone saw something large enough and near enough to the earth that its disclike shape was not lost in the haze conditions. That is even closer than the moon, and is very probably within our own atmosphere. Obviously the ship was in Distress or Under A k, else it would Not hav n_usin Much Power, thus going so Slowly & Glowing so fiercely. Oh! Yes! Was the L-M inspection ship, in distrustful truce of Above "S" ship, FORCE SHIELD GOING FULL POWER FOR PROTECTION 159 TO THIS MAN THERE IS A PROBLEM, NOT TO ANYONE /MPORTANT. COMET “B” OF 1881