| |
|
Subject: [tt-watch] The Stars Tonight
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001
I and a friend of mine made it down to the Gordon Macmillan Southam Observatory tonight and had what I believe was a very strange experience. I called the observatory around 7:30 and spoke to some guy and asked if it was okay to look at a object near the constellation Orion. He said that there was some large pipe that had been placed in front of the observatory and was not sure if he could swing the telescope in that direction but that we might be able to see something. He recommended coming around 8:30. When we made it there he seemed helpful until he asked what I was looking for and I said possibly a comet. I told him I had exact coordinates and that it would be about magnitude 11, diffuse and a red filter would be helpful. He said optimal time to look would be about 9:30. There was also a full moon tonight but it was not up yet. We hung around outside for about 1/2 hr looking through some telescopes that some amateurs were viewing with and headed back into the observatory to make sure this guy did not forget about us. From that time on he completely ignored or avoided us and hung out outside mostly. Nothing too off kilter yet.
Finally it's 10:00 and I go outside and ask him when he can move the telescope. He then off handily replies that Orion has gone below the horizon and we wouldn't be able to see anything anymore. I said even Dec 16? which he replied that we may be able to see that high. When we went back inside to put the coordinates on the computer his behavior became what I would describe as markedly disturbed. When I read him the coordinates (it was fairly dark inside) he entered the first in wrong, and after I corrected him only entered into three decimal places and rounded up when he should have rounded down. He remarked that the other decimal places were not necessary. I didn't persist because I felt it would be in the ball park. He then moved the telescope, went over to the eye piece (it was so fast I wasn't even sure he looked), came back, muttered something about trees, moons, horizons or something, entered in new coordinates, moved the telescope and left to the other side and began talking to some other people before I could even say a word. I was quite perplexed and wasn't sure what had happened but I wasn't going to give up.
I approached him again and asked him if he looked at those coordinates. He said he had, nothing there and tried to brush me off. I asked him if he could move it back so I could take a look. He then brought out some big star chart book, opened it up, pointed to the very bottom of the map on the page and said it was very low. I then persisted if that was the right area and he then changed and pointed to near the top of the map. I said we should be able to see it then no problem and again directly asked if he could move it to those coordinates so I could take a quick look. It was like he was speechless, looking around blankly, brought out another book, opened it, started babbling about nothing until I stopped him and told him that we've been waiting two hours and could we please take a look. He then re-enters the coordinates which I read off again and moved the telescope. I go to take a look.
Near the center I see nothing that I think looks like the 12th (just a couple stars) but at the very top right corner if I moved my head I could see what appeared to be a darkish, diffuse, round spot, fairly large (I also got him to hand me a red filter but was then not able to see even the brightest objects in my view). I asked him if that darkish spot was anything or just an optical flaw and he said it was optical (we were viewing Saturn earlier and I did not recall seeing any dark spot and I thought it was strange to have such a large flaw on the eyepiece of a $200,000 piece of equipment). He then handed my friend a hand held controller that had about six dials or buttons on it and said he could move the telescope around and walked away - no instructions. My friend looked at me like "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?". I looked through several times and the spot was definitely discernible. I then approached the guy, thanked him for his time and gave him a friendly pat on the arm. He did not even respond or look up at me.
When we left I asked my friend if it was just me or if that guy was acting very strange. My friend felt that he was acting very strange and at the very least definitely not trying to help us. My feeling was that this guys mind was under the influence of fear or had been programmed to some half-ass script beyond his conscious control. Mind control victims or not, I will try again next weekend weather permitting :) .