Filename: Phoenix9.Edi
Type : Editorial/Opinion
Author : Sean Pobuda
Date : 10/27/92
Desc : Editorial on the Phoenix Project's K2 Report


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I have been reading with interest the publications of the "Phoenix
Project" which, if believed, are evidence for the presence of an alien
base in California. I would, however, like to point out one more
discrepancy in their story. In Report #4, the following information is
given regarding a UFO sighting:

By Staff #2
Date: August 10, 1989
Time: 2212 PDT

..."the moon was still below the horizon."

Now here is one place where a simple fact is stated and can be checked.
I did. Using four separate planetarium and moon position calculation
programs, I determined that the moon on that night at that time was as
follows:

RA : 16 hr 8 min
DEC : -26.17 degrees (this means in the constellation of Scorpio)
Phase: 9.5 days passed new moon (waxing gibbous)

What this means is that the moon would be between first quarter and
full, and would have risen before sunset and been in the sky during the
evening hours before midnight. The report states that the sky was clear
with stars visible.

The moon was low in the western horizon, but certainly not "...still
below the horizon."

What is interesting is that no one has (to my knowledge) checked this
simple statement. Since the moon had certainly already risen and should
have been visible in the sky, one might assume that the statement it
hat not yet risen (was "still below the horizon") was put in to help
eliminate the moon as a possible explanation for the UFO sighting. Did
the author, therefore, add this statement so no one could accuse him of
mistaking the moon for a UFO? This is what you would expect of someone
who was making up a story, not the on-site notes of an actual observer.
Apparently the bit about the moon not yet having risen was added
without checking the moon's actual position on that night.

In anticipation of a counter-argument that since the moon was close to
its setting time and, in a moutainous area, might possibly have already
gone behind a mountain and therefore not be visible to the observer, I
can only point out that in that case the observer, who had been on
watch for a while at least, would have seen the moon earlier and known
that it had just set. He would, therefore, not describe it as "the moon
was still below the horizon." That certainly implies that the moon had
not yet risen, when, in fact, it had been in the sky all evening.

My feeling is that 99.9999 percent of all UFO reports and claims are
fakes, mistakes, hoaxes, mis-identifications, and other human errors.
But let us continue our search for a little signal in all that noise
(to steal a phrase from engineering).

Yours,
Sean



Jim Singleton
telnet://ricksbbs.synchro.net:23
http://ricksbbs.synchro.net:8080
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