81 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
81 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: THE PHOENIX PROJECT FROM A GENIE FORUM FILE: UFO2506
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PART 9
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Filename: Phoenix9.Edi
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Type : Editorial/Opinion
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Author : Sean Pobuda
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Date : 10/27/92
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Desc : Editorial on the Phoenix Project's K2 Report
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I have been reading with interest the publications of the "Phoenix
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Project" which, if believed, are evidence for the presence of an alien
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base in California. I would, however, like to point out one more
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discrepancy in their story. In Report #4, the following information is
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given regarding a UFO sighting:
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By Staff #2
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Date: August 10, 1989
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Time: 2212 PDT
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..."the moon was still below the horizon."
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Now here is one place where a simple fact is stated and can be checked.
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I did. Using four separate planetarium and moon position calculation
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programs, I determined that the moon on that night at that time was as
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follows:
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RA : 16 hr 8 min
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DEC : -26.17 degrees (this means in the constellation of Scorpio)
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Phase: 9.5 days passed new moon (waxing gibbous)
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What this means is that the moon would be between first quarter and
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full, and would have risen before sunset and been in the sky during the
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evening hours before midnight. The report states that the sky was clear
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with stars visible.
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The moon was low in the western horizon, but certainly not "...still
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below the horizon."
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What is interesting is that no one has (to my knowledge) checked this
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simple statement. Since the moon had certainly already risen and should
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have been visible in the sky, one might assume that the statement it
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hat not yet risen (was "still below the horizon") was put in to help
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eliminate the moon as a possible explanation for the UFO sighting. Did
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the author, therefore, add this statement so no one could accuse him of
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mistaking the moon for a UFO? This is what you would expect of someone
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who was making up a story, not the on-site notes of an actual observer.
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Apparently the bit about the moon not yet having risen was added
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without checking the moon's actual position on that night.
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In anticipation of a counter-argument that since the moon was close to
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its setting time and, in a moutainous area, might possibly have already
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gone behind a mountain and therefore not be visible to the observer, I
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can only point out that in that case the observer, who had been on
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watch for a while at least, would have seen the moon earlier and known
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that it had just set. He would, therefore, not describe it as "the moon
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was still below the horizon." That certainly implies that the moon had
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not yet risen, when, in fact, it had been in the sky all evening.
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My feeling is that 99.9999 percent of all UFO reports and claims are
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fakes, mistakes, hoaxes, mis-identifications, and other human errors.
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But let us continue our search for a little signal in all that noise
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(to steal a phrase from engineering).
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Yours,
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Sean
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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