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Thinking on UFO sightings

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wombat103

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Thinking on UFO sightings...... I was watching a Discovery Channel documentary.....where they were discussing the UFO "do they, do they not exist" question.

One scientist came up with something that is one of "THOSE" observations, which left me stunned ... he said, " ......considering the number of Astronomers who watch the sky every night.... people who know their night sky and its contents intimately....... they are the one body of people who never report "unidentified" objects in the sky". ie, They know what the objects are and therefore do not miss-classify them as unidentified craft.

Made me, think that one did.

Either that, or all the astronomers have been abducted ..... but that is a conspiracy theory............... I'll leave it for another time.
 
..but on the other hand, remember that the classification system now ubiquitous in describing ufo encounters (i.e. of the first, second and third kinds), was actually invented by an astronomer: J Allen Hynek whose investigations into the UFO phenonomen converted him from being an outright sceptic to becoming a reluctant believer.
 
There have been reports of 'UFOs' by astronomers, but they became less common as the whole subject area became one of those things that was not kosher for consideration ;) This also extends to astronomers claiming to have seen objects on or around the moon, earlier in the 20th century.

I don't think what was said in the documentary you mentioned was inferring that somehow astronomers are privvy to some big secret. After all, what's reported as a 'UFO' often as not has a mundane source, i.e. meteorites, etc.. Also, as the whole subject is nowadays not something that most scientists would give any consideration, it's unlikely that they would either report something, or would classify it as something else.
 
It is amazing the things that people can be fooled by. I didn't believe anyone could be seriously be fooled by Venus etc until I started to actually investigate some UFO reports (in a small way).

There was a case in Australia a few years back that was a partial eclipse of the sun seen through thin cloud! I think this is my favourite. But there are so many reports that are blatantly Mars/flares/shooting stars etc that when you consider all the slightly more "exotic" reasons (such as irridium flares and other things people can be excused for not knowing about) there must be a vanishingly small number of things that ARE actually hard to explain.
 
Some very experienced pilots who should know the sky do report unusual sighitngs but that is not to say that nobody can be fooled.
Surely the difference with astronomers is that they are mostly looking beyond the atmosphere while the everyday reports seem mostly lower ie below cloud level, though if there were space ships arriving in the conventional sense you would thnk the telesopes would see them first.
 
Piffle! Astronomers certainly `do` see odd things they cannot explain...

Was it Mr Hynek who in his studies discovered that astronomers are likley to be puzzled by odd aircraft...while pilots are fooled by heavenly bodies??

What a suprise!

Even the real sceptics believe that cat core the UFO mystery is real. (but they may deny the ETH)
 
Astronomers Heading For The Stars

Webpage detailing UFO's which actually were reported by astronomers, although nothing more recent than the 70's.

Probably also worth bearing in mind that many people who see mysterious objects in the skies will not bother reporting them out of fear of ridicule: probably especially true of astromoners who would face being the butt of colleagues jokes for the rest of their professional life.
 
Observing and reporting seemingly anomalous phenomena such as mysterious objects shouldn't in itself lead to ridicule. It's putting an incredible interpretation above all else that might be ridiculed.
 
wombat said:
......considering the number of Astronomers who watch the sky every night.... people who know their night sky and its contents intimately....... they are the one body of people who never report "unidentified" objects in the sky". ie, They know what the objects are and therefore do not miss-classify them as unidentified craft.......
Click to expand...

The problem here lies in the distinction between "Unidentified Aerial/Astronomical Phenomena" and "Unidentified Flying Objects".

I agree that most observations of unusual lights in the sky can be explained by aircraft, atmospheric conditions and astronomical objects and/or events. To people who not aware of or do not understand such thing, however, they are UAAP.

Any astronomer worthy of the title will never identify a light in the sky as a UFO. He/she will identify it as a UAAP, a natural phenomenon that is yet to be understood by him/her.

The designation UFO best applies to UAAP that have been seen to have more structure than a mere light in the sky. A UFO is just that, an Unidentified Flying Object, an apparently real thing that is foreign to the observer.

Granted, further investigation by more knowledgeable individuals will show that most of these things have fairly mundane explanations. There are, however, some that do not.

These are true UFO. This does not mean that they are objects from another planet or dimension, but by the same token, they do not appear to be from this one.

In closing, I will say that I have seen a couple of UFO. I am not prepared to say that they were from somewhere other than here and now, but after years of comparing them to known objects I have yet to find a match.

Thanks
.
 
speaking as some one who, at times , is struggling to hold binnoculars steady, how can you realistically observe something that has sometimes rapid movement through any sort of telescope ?
" the only body of people who never report - sic - unidentified objects in the sky - " may not report them because they were`nt aware of them in the first place and not because they know what they are and wish, supposedly, to keep it quiet.
 
and another thing . . professional pilots who have to know what`s wot in the sky are not fooled by " strange lights "
- that is for the private and inexperienced, sometimes, pilot who may at best fly 5 hrs a year.
food drink n comfy bed is to do with parallax in the dark, and a bright light with no relative movement won`t be mistaken for anything closeby - it can`t happen.
 
What about the `foo fighters`??

and who was that guy who crashed because he was chasing after venus...was his name Mantell??

I assume that as a fighter pilot he was a trained observer

(not to mention all those weary guys who get scrambled for unknown objects every week....)
 
but I agree ! that - for me - is taken as read !
I can`t believe that the official line is the end of it - the first one at the aircraft accident is the pilot and the second one there is either the insurance man reading the small print or the government man saying " what you doing here nothing happened ! " either way the main witness is probably dead.
just remembered something very strange near Stirling tell, later if interested . .
 
Thomas Mantell died in January 1948 chasing a UFO which was reportedly "white and umbrella shaped", although Mantells own last words were that it was "metallic and tremendous in size and appears to be moving at half my speed".

Nothing more was heard from him, and a couple of hours later the remains of his crashed aircraft were discovered. Mantell 's plane was not equipped with oxygen cylinders, and it seems that in the excitement of the chase he had climbed far too high and then blacked out from lack of oxygen.

At the time, rumours spread that he had been shot down by a UFO and the AirForce rushed out a statement explaining that Mantell had died chasing the planet Venus. When they realised that Venus would not have even been visible at the time of the incident (three in the afternoon), they hurriedly changed the story and blamed a stray weather balloon.

Most rational Ufologists now believe that Mantell had been pursuing a
Skyhook Balloon

Pic of Skyhook on this page
 
Homo Aves said:
What about the `foo fighters`??

and who was that guy who crashed because he was chasing after venus...was his name Mantell??

I assume that as a fighter pilot he was a trained observer

(not to mention all those weary guys who get scrambled for unknown objects every week....)
Click to expand...

Pilots are just as fallible as anyone else, so it would be unwise to assume that they don't ever misidentify what they're seeing. It's even more erratic with combat pilots - there are alot of stories of claims made by pilots and crew of seeing aircraft, markings, etc. that just didn't exist, weren't in that theatre, etc.. 'Foo fighters' could also be a good example of this process.
 
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