On the night of July 19th, 1952, note that date, astronomers working at Mount Palomar
Observatory’s 48 inch Oschin Schmidt camera telescope were imaging areas of the sky as
part of an extensive survey of the northern hemisphere heavens. As many huge aperture
astronomical telescopes are, this type of telescope is designed very specifically to
be an astronomical camera, at the time imaging on glass photographic plates coated in silver
salts. In those days, this telescope was state of the art, having only been commissioned
four years before. This telescope is still in service today in a much upgraded and modernized
configuration and has made a number of important discoveries in its history, including the
minor planets Sedna and Eris among others.
During its lifetime as a photographic plate camera, this telescope accumulated an archive
of no less than 19,000 photographic plates that had accumulated and then languished in
a basement at Caltech for decades. A volunteer group recently went through and conserved
the plates and digitized them, and they are now available for astronomers to study astronomical
images taken decades ago. The preservation of old sky survey plates is something that
proved important in the Tabby’s star study, itself still nominally a candidate for a technosignature
of alien origin. Old plates preserve a record of events from long ago, even in astronomy.
On that July night at 8:52 pm, an image was taken of an area of the sky at the celestial
coordinates Right Ascension = 21ℎ18𝑚10.4𝑠 , Declination = +50°22’43.4” near Cygnus,
not visually far from Tabby’s Star, followed up by a second image of the same area about
one hour later at 9:52 pm. This was done to provide data in two different wavelengths
of light, one in red and the other blue using filters. These types of plates are incredibly
useful on a number of fronts, but one area where these kinds of sky surveys are of interest
is in the study of transients.
The night sky may look static, but on close inspection, it sometimes isn’t. Stars can
change in brightness. Variable stars can be intrinsically variable, and pulsate and change
brightness often on predictable time scales like clocks. They can also do it irregularly.
Stars can also dramatically change brightness with no warning, such as a red dwarf flaring
and suddenly growing in brightness, or dust moving in front of a star causing it to dim,
and of course Betelgeuse’s recent naked eye visible dimming when it expelled a cloud
of gas and dust.
But the searches for these kinds of variable stars tended to be on relatively long time
scales, it took Betelgeuse weeks to do what it did, and even longer to recover, and other
known types of variability in stars, such as supernovae, tend to last in terms of months
to a year. What hasn’t been looked too extensively until now are very rapid transients that last
less than a day, so plates like the Palomar plates taken within hours of each other offer
a unique opportunity to try to catch astronomical events that persist only for timelines of
hours, a cadence which may give insights on astrophysical phenomena that we currently
are totally unaware of.
The problem with this kind of work however with modern telescopes and images is that
satellites really confound searches for astrophysical transients. There are all sorts of issues
from solar panels glinting to satellite point sources that appear and disappear in modern
photography along with tracks. So the idea is to focus on plates like those of Mount
Palomar taken before the launch of Sputnik in 1957 when there were no satellites in orbit.
So far, this has proven interesting, and quite enigmatic.
In a paper by Enrique Solano and colleagues they report the discovery of one such transient
in the palomar plates from the night of July 19, 1952. But it’s weird. In this case,
the first plate taken an hour before the other shows what appears to be a cluster of three
star-like points. Not just one, three clustered together. In variable stars, variability is
something inherent to the star itself, it’s a point source usually distant from anything
else, so if it sees a flare or something, it’s due to the star itself doing something.
In this case, it was a cluster of three star-like points that appeared on the plate very close
to each other. These appear to be stars in every way, fixed in the sky as stars are,
without motion over the time of the photographic exposure, but, and here’s the kicker, an
hour later they were gone, or had dimmed below the threshold of the telescope’s detectability,
which was something like magnitude 21.
This is weird, whatever those points were they either vanished or dimmed dramatically,
to a degree far more than most astrophysical processes can do. The researchers involved
know what things like flaws and damage to these kinds of plates look like, and these
do not appear to be that. Nor is contamination from nuclear testing, which can affect plates
of that era, likely in this case. That does not appear to be what this is. Rather they
look like a group of three bright, meaning 15th magnitude, stars on the plate. Bright
in context, but these would not have been visible to the naked eye at the time. Just
normal stars in an astrophotography plate, which is probably why no one at Palomar at
the time noticed them. But then they simply disappeared without a trace an hour later.
This should not be. A group of three probably unrelated stars all next to each other from
our perspective should not up and disappear, or dim out of view that rapidly. The problem
is, with a single variable star, you shouldn’t see it as a cluster of three stars that are
there one hour, and not in the next. Subsequent attempts using modern instruments to see if
these point-like transients have ever returned have come up with nothing, they’re still
gone, though if they are turning on and off periodically we wouldn’t see that in just
a few images. You’d have to catch them at the right time, which may be possible with
coming telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin observatory where it’s expected that all manner of short
transients will be detected each day. Catching flashes of light, no matter the origin, will
be something this dedicated survey telescope will be able to do.
Another mystery is that if these objects were unrelated stars, the nature of the speed of
light should prevent them from all turning off at once. The points of light were all
within 10 arc seconds of each other if they were individual objects, and we’re talking
about an hour here, so causality and the speed of light constrains them to less than 6 astronomical
units apart from each other. This is very strange indeed because it would also mean
that these sources were close. Very close. The maximum distance to account for them is
two light years. That’s not all. The minimum distance they could have been at, is in orbit
of earth. Remember that date, July 19th, 1952. One can play with ideas of a relatively close
knit group of Kuiper belt objects, or further out, two light years gets into the territory
of material mixing with that of Alpha Centauri, reflecting some kind of transient bright light
source like a flash in the outer solar system, but the chances of that aren’t good and
what that far out could do it? There really isn’t anything there that we know of so
it remains a mystery.
But this would account for the fact that the objects no longer appear in that area of the
sky, solar system objects move in their orbits over time. But it doesn’t account for why
they didn’t appear in the second plate an hour later, things don’t move that fast
especially that far out there. Another option floated by the authors is that of some kind
of gravitational lensing effect. The idea is that some massive object in the foreground,
such as a stellar mass black hole, very briefly lensed and magnified a background object that
is too dim for our telescopes to normally see. This however is fraught with problems,
not the least of which it dimmed too quickly to plausibly be that along with other variables
needed for it to come together just so. It basically requires some sort of astronomical
event like a visual component of a fast radio burst to happen just at that exact time as
to be lensed, which is really unlikely. That may put this one into technosignature territory,
but close technosignature territory.
Look for a discussion of the strangeness of this transient this Thursday on Event Horizon
where the guest will be one of the co authors of the new paper Dr. Beatriz Villaroel, which
includes discussion of all of these prospects. So as far as technosignatures, There are two
possibilities that can be considered here. One is the exhaust of a closeby photon rocket,
but that should be significantly more obvious. One that close would be a bright night sky
object to say the least. The other is a bit more tricky, but relevant, and now we’re
in weird territory, but all things must be considered. More on that in a bit.
It’s also worth noting, this is not the only time this has happened. In other photographic
plates a series of nine transient events in similar circumstances on April 12, 1950 were
found that remain unexplained and may represent examples of the same phenomenon, links to
papers on these incidents also in the description, but there was also a very strange incident
of a transient reported by Villarroel and colleagues found also in the palomar plates
what appears to have been an object, in scientific terms a population of high albedo objects
in orbit of earth, but in other words a satellite tracking across a plate 7 years before the
launch of Sputnik and the beginning of the satellite age. That too remains a mystery.
I reiterate, links to all papers in the description, see the science of this for yourself.
So whatever these transients represent remains unknown, nor is it known if they are related.
And there are going to be a lot more of them coming down the pike in the coming years with
advanced survey telescopes coming online. The good news is that further research can
be done here, and is being done to get to the bottom of these disappearing stars. But
in the interest of providing a complete picture, I would be remiss if I didn’t note what
else was reported on July 19, 1952. Remember, the closest distance for this trio of transients
was in orbit of earth.
On that night at about 11:40 PM local time at Washington National airport, Washington
DC air traffic controller Edward Nugent detected 7 objects appearing on his radar. There were
no known aircraft in that area, which was about 15 miles south of DC probably somewhere
due south of Alexandria and they were not following established flight paths. Nugent’s
boss Harry Barnes joined him at the radarscope and they watched the radar returns together
for a time, and they both noted that the movements of the objects were erratic and far outside
of what aircraft could do in the 1950’s, or for that matter today.
The radar system was checked by two other ATC operators and found to be working normally,
and by this time there were at least four controllers watching the radarscope, so they
called the airport’s control tower that had another separate radar for verification.
Two controllers there however were also watching the same blips, but from a higher vantage
point in the tower had spotted a corresponding bright light in the sky that hovered and moved
around at incredible speed. Then even more objects appeared all over both radar screens,
even passing uncomfortably near the White House. This prompted the controllers to contact
Andrews Air Force Base ten miles away.
This is a problematic area of the story in that Andrews did not initially see these objects
on radar, but an airman on base visually spotted one, describing it as an orange ball of fire
that took off at improbably high speed. On the runway of Washington National was a DC-4
pilot waiting to be cleared for take off. He spotted something that he thought was a
meteor and might have been, but was then alerted by the controllers of something, whatever
they were seeing on the radar, was heading towards him. He then saw six fast moving lights,
with no apparent flight surfaces he could discern. The controllers and the pilot were
able to corroborate that what he saw corresponded to what they were seeing on radar. These then
streaked off at high speed.
By this point objects were being picked up at Andrews Airforce base as well, and both
locations simultaneously picked up an object that appeared to be hovering over a radio
beacon, this involved three separate radars, and all three saw it vanish at the same time.
At 3 am, a pair of F-94 Starfire military jets moved into the area, and all of the objects
promptly vanished from the radars, leading the head aircraft controller, Harry Barnes,
to suspect that the objects were monitoring radio traffic and actively responding to it
as though they understood it. The objects were last detected at 5:30 am and vanished
at sunrise.
There were several other events in July 1952, including one report of a sighting at the
Hanford nuclear facility, which is where the United States at the time was manufacturing
nuclear weapons materials in the state of Washington on the west coast. Again on the
night of July 26th, personnel on a commercial plane spotted a light from the windows of
the aircraft, and again the radars at Washington National and Andrews Air Force Base were tracking
more unknown objects. As it unfolded, objects were detected everywhere on the radars, some
moving slowly, some moving an estimated 7000 miles per hour.
Again jets were scrambled at about 11:30 pm. One jet saw nothing when it moved into what
should have been visual range of some of the objects on the radar, but his wingman did
see four white lights and chased them, apparently below a thousand feet, but couldn’t catch
up to them at maximum speed. Later that night, two more jets were scrambled, again one saw
nothing, the other saw a white light, along with a number of reports from civilian aircraft
of lights corresponding to targets seen on the radar at Andrews. Then, as the sun rose,
all contacts vanished.
The apparently numerous different radar operators felt that the returns were too strong for
weather phenomena and that they appeared to be solid objects. In the end, the incident
made US national headlines, and even caught the attention of US president Harry Truman.
The CIA became concerned, and the air force held a press conference reiterating that incidents
like this were not a threat to national security with the whole thing pinned on temperature
inversions, something that was disputed by the witnesses and radar operators for many
years after. We’ll very likely never know what that was.
So there’s the story. As an open minded skeptic of an alien origin for UFOs, there’s
not much I can do with a UFO incident that happened over 70 years ago. Those UFOs are
long gone, and we can’t set up equipment and take measurements from a modern perspective.
I make no judgments though, I believe those people saw something, and legitimately didn’t
know what it was. But what I do find strange is that a photographic plate uncovered seven
decades later showed something anomalous on that very night, though granted Washington
DC and Palomar are on opposite sides of the country. Anyway, puzzling at least. So you
tell me, what do you think on that strange summer night of July 19, 1952 the Schmidt
Camera at Mount Palomar Observatory caught on film?
Thanks for listening! I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently
halloween level spooked. It’s like October in December. I have to wonder though, if something
like the 1952 flap happened today, and wasn’t just a bunch of sightings but included a modern
CCD image from a major telescope, what would happen? I’m really not sure, but it would
be interesting indeed and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book
retailer and subscribe to my channels for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting,
weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.