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Venus: The debunker’s myth?
Arecent posting by Kevin Randle on his blog, revealed that Brad Sparks has begun to question various “debunker’s” attempts to use Venus as a source of UFO reports. He specifically made the accusation that Allan Hendry either created a hoax or was fooled into repeating a lie told by an FAA official.
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Hoax, exaggeration, or true story?
Kevin Randle’s blog entry, written by Brad Sparks, took issue with a quote that appears in Allan Hendry’s UFO Handbook. On page 27 and 102, Hendry makes the following quote from an FAA official at the Detroit airport:
Do you know how many times we’ve cleared Venus to land?1
Sparks says the answer to this question is “Zero” because Venus would never respond to any attempt to give clearance so it can neverbe“clearedtoland”. HealsonotesthatthereisnocasenumberforthisincidentinHendry’sbooksoitwasneverreallyinves- tigated.
I think Sparks is taking the quote far too literally in his commentary. It appears to have been a poor choice of words by the official or Hendry simply misquoted him. The statement seems to have been made in a joking manner to reflect the observation by Hendry that he was aware that Venus had been misidentified by air traffic controllers. Apparently, Sparks found no humor in it.
In the NOVA program, “The case for the UFOs”, Hendry repeats this story with a slightly different description:
I suppose my favorite Venus story was the time that I was working with Air Traffic Controllers at a large metropolitan airport here in the United States, who were expecting the arrival of a flight in the eastern sky during dawn hours. And...uh... when they caught sight of Venus out the control tower windows, they started radioing to the planet, “clearance to land”.2
So, it really was not a matter of giving clearance but attempting to give clear- ance for Venus to land.
It wasn’t just Hendry that was guilty of repeating this story. Dr. Hynek also made a similar statement. In an interview with Barb Martinec, which ap- peared in the La Grange Suburban Life Citizen on November 4, 1978, Hynek was quoted as giving the following statement:
An air traffic controller told me ‘You’d be surprised how many times we’ve given Venus permission to land, “he said.3
Was he basing this on what Hendry told him or was he making the statement based on his personal experience? We don’t know but it seems that Air Traffic Controllers confusing Venus with an approaching aircraft is something that both Hendry and Hynek believed had happened.
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Some examples of Venus being mistaken for something other than a celestial object. Going from top to bottom and left to right we see that Venus was mistaken for an airship4, a Japanese plane at night5, a high altitude balloon6, A Zeppelin7, Japanese Balloon Bombs8, and Apollo 16/a piece of the moon/or an object going to strike the moon9.
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Sparks has suggested that because there are no specifics of these events, the case may be a hoax perpetrated by Hendry or the air traffic controller. The objective of this hoax was to humiliate UFO witnesses. I agree with Sparks that there are no specifics here and it is nothing more than an anecdotal claim. However, to draw the conclusion that this was some sort of hoax, without any evidence other than belief, is not looking at this objectively.
I find it hard to believe that Hendry, Hynek, or the unnamed Air Traffic Controller/FAA official were thinking of ways to humiliate UFO witnesses when they made this statement. It seems more likely that the individual was telling Hendry or Hynek that they sometimes did confuse Venus for the landing lights of an airplane.
A brief history of Venus misidentified
Venus started to play a role as a misidentified object starting with the advent of the aviation era (see newspaper clippings above). During the airship wave of 1897, there were several reports that were made that indicated Venus was a source. Witnesses, who heard about these “airships” in the news papers, went outside in the evening, looked up, and saw the planet prominent in the west- ern evening sky. Like today, the “man in the street”, was probably not aware of what was visible in the evening sky. When you look for an “airship” with an electric light and see a bright light in the sky, it was easy to draw the conclusion that Venus was the “airship” light. Venus does not explain all the airship sightings but there are too many coincidences to ignore the possibility that some of these sightings were of Venus.
During both World Wars, Venus was misidentified as a plane, balloon, or Zeppelin. Witnesses were more than willing to believe that Venus was a hostile aircraft of some kind. There are examples of ships and bomber crews attempting to shoot down Venus thinking it was some sort of enemy aircraft. Nervous airmen, sailors, and civilians, who were concerned about enemy aircraft saw the planet and determined it to be what they feared.
My first exposure to how Venus could be misidentified occurred shortly after I began to become involved in amateur astronomy.
On April 16, 1972, Apollo 16 had been launched and was on its way to the moon. That evening, Venus was close to the crescent moon. I remember seeing this and reading the papers the next day, where many people across the nation thought they had seen the Apollo 16 capsule on the way to the moon. Others thought it was something else. Like the examples involving the airship waves and World Wars, people saw what they wanted to see. Is it any surprise that people, who want to see UFOs are going to misidentify Venus as a UFO or, in the case of Hendry/Hynek’s anecdote, a potential aircraft lining up for a landing?
On April 16, 1972, Apollo 16 had been launched and was on its way to the moon. That evening, Venus was close to the crescent moon. I remember seeing this and reading the papers the next day, where many people across the nation thought they had seen the Apollo 16 capsule on the way to the moon. Others thought it was something else. Like the examples involving the airship waves and World Wars, people saw what they wanted to see. Is it any surprise that people, who want to see UFOs are going to misidentify Venus as a UFO or, in the case of Hendry/Hynek’s anecdote, a potential aircraft lining up for a landing?
Venus as a UFO report generator
Sparks’ article seems to imply that whatever Hendry wrote about UFOs can not be trusted. This would include the fact that a great many of Hendry’s UFO cases were determined to be stars and planets. Venus being a UFO report generator is not just something that has been mentioned only by Hendry. I have found several prominent UFOlogists agree with this conclusion over the years based on their own personal experience.
Jaques Vallee - No single object has been misinterpreted as a ‘flying saucer’ more often than the planet Venus.10
Raymond Fowler - The four brightest planets - Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn - are also often reported as UFOs. Of these four, Venus is the chief culprit....11
Frank Salisbury - Many of the UFOs I have studied have turned out to be the planet Venus; other stars and planets have sometimes accounted for other UFOs. 12
It has been my opinion that when Venus is prominent in the evening sky a certain percentage of UFO reports are probably caused by it. However, is this just an opinion or is it a fact? Unfortunately, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and National UFO Reporting Cen- ter (NUFORC), who have UFO databases available on-line, do not list any conclusions to their investigations of these UFO reports. In order to see how often Venus was possibly reported as a UFO, I chose to examine these databases.
I went to the NUFORC and MUFON web sites to examine the reports between October 1 and 14, 2013. As an additional test, I exam- ined the reports submitted to NUFORC between March 7 and 17th of 2012. During that time period, Jupiter and Venus were close together (see image above) and, in my opinion, should have generated a significant number of UFO reports that would be easy to identify. The results were interesting.
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Many of these raw reports are missing additional data that could positively identify the source. I tried to take an objective approach in my numbers and I would like to point out that in my first pass of the NUFORC October 1-14 cases, I identified 35 potential Venus sightings. However, after closer examination of the sighting descriptions, I determined that only 15 were “probably Venus” (note: Probably means in my subjective opinion). Many of the others did not contain sufficient information to indicate Venus was the source or the descriptions indicated the report was not Venus.
As one final test, I decided to sample the ten day period from November 26 to December 5th using the NUFORC database16. During this time period, Venus was approaching greatest brilliancy. Out of 210 reports I examined, 19 were probably Venus. This is roughly nine percent, indicating that the percentage of UFO reports generated by Venus is a function of when Venus is most prominent.
Larry Hatch’s UFO database
Larry Hatch’s database is a collection of raw UFO reports, which he has attempted to analyze for trends. One of his most interest- ing comparisons is his plot of the number of UFO sightings with the proximity of Venus to the Earth. Using a database of 16976 reports, we discover that when Venus was at superior and inferior conjunction with the sun, the number of UFO reports dropped significantly (679 and 633). 17
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Using these numbers, one could draw the conclusion that Venus appears to play a significant role in the number of UFO sightings when it is most prominent. The spikes of sightings around greatest brilliancy are significant and appear to agree with my ten day sample in late November/early December 2013.
Still the queen of UFOs
Based on what many UFO investigators seem to indicate, and what these raw numbers appear to reveal, Venus does appear to play a significant role in producing UFO reports. This does not mean that all UFO reports are produced by Venus. To suggest such is folly. It just means that Venus is something that has to be considered as a potential source when it is visible. There is little reason to reject Hendry’s findings about Venus in his book. We can, and should, question the story about air traffic controllers at- tempting to clear Venus to land but, based on what we know about Venus and UFO reports, we should not consider it a hoax.
More importantly, to ignore Venus as a potential source in any UFO sighting, especially when the witness does not mention seeing it, is ignoring what is known about how witnesses often mistake Venus for something other than a celestial object. When a UFO report is generated, the first thing a UFO investigator should ask is, “Could it have been Venus?”
Quelle: SUNlite 1/2014
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