link to Home Page

Planet X: the UNWISE Astronomer


Unwise in that he didn't know he wasn't supposed to look THERE.  What
was it Kahuna was saying about looking out the side of the eye and
motion increasing the eye's ability to SEE?  Here's a recent report:

    To be honest, I was really nervous about going to the observatory regarding 
    planet X. I just didn't know what to say, I didn't want to totally fabricate 
    but I didn't think they would take me seriously if I told them the whole 
    Planet X scenario.  Well, I put it off for a while until I thought about 
    everything you must have went through, and contactees must go through,
    when they go public.  Plus, I felt that it was something that was more
    important than my anxiety and I did after all tell you I would go check the specs
    for you (sorry it took so long!).  I just barely went, on February 9th. They 
    were curious where I got the coordinants, so I told them that my
    astronomy teacher in high school got me interested in the subject (which is true)
    and that I had a project (sort of true, but not the way it implies) and that
    I went online and someone reccomend I check these coordinants for a
    large uncharted object when I went to an astronomy chatroom (the chat part not
    so  true) and that I couldn't explain any more about it because I didn't
    know any more about it and the main reason I was looking it up was because I was
    young and the 'uncharted' object sounded exciting.  Needless to say, it
    worked.
    The scope at my university observatory on it's best day got up to a 12th 
    magnitude object and bc of light pollution usually gets only around 9th 
    magnitude.  I stalled for a while then asked if he would take requests. 
    He said sure, and changed the decimal into minutes.  As the telescope
    ambled around to the western half of Orion, I remembered the red filter.  
    Unfortunately, no such luck; they didn't have filters.  He peered into
    the eye piece and twiddled with it until he blurted out a loud "WOAH!"  He
    then got really excited and said he saw SOMETHING but it just dissapeared,
    like he lost sight of it as he was adjusting and that it was very strange that
    he couldn't find it again.  He wrote some stuff down and mumbled something
    about "must have been a reflection" but still sounded very surprised.  He
    indicated that there was definitely something there and waived on one of the
    backyard astronomers to take a look(there were three others beside me, the
    operator, and two backyard observers).  While the backyard observer was looking,
    the operator referred to his star chart and was thoroughly perplexed that
    there wasn't any comet or large object listed.  The backyard observer couldn't
    find anything, but the operator had fiddled with it for a little while
    before.  Before he gave me the chance to look for myself, he said 'oh well must
    have been a reflection' in a really rushed way  and then added 'let's go to
    the crab nebula'.  
    I wish I could have come clean about the whole planet X thing, 
    but I didn't know how to explain it concisely without sound nutty.  It
    would have been great to get pictures or at least a look into the scope, but
    the operator just changed the viewing and closed up right after he looked
    for himself.  So close yet so far.