PROJECT 10073 RECORD DAlE TIME GROUP 2. LOCATION Wil.Jri:J t te Ill:inois (2 Witnesses) CONCLUSION Civiliar-.. s Astro :CAPELLA) ElM I) N.UMBE R Or OBJECTS LENGTH C r OSSERVATION 11. BRIEF SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS SEE CASE FILE 6. TYPE OF OcSERVATION Grou. -:d.-Visual 9. PHYSICAL f \. !OENCE FTD S E P 6 3 0-329 (TOE) Preloua ed1ti0fts of thl form F be u .. cl. m:o Report: ""of" August 3, 1966 by Mr. and Mrs. venue, Wilmette, Illinois. (soft "g") is a secretary at the School of Education, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Mr. Communications, Illinois State Toll Road. T'ne Sighting: At about 0<>45, August 3 pa~ng for bed after an evening of editing slides. Mrs t he bedroom window and noticed a bright object that appeared stationary. It was flickering, changi ng brightness erratically and showing faint flashes of red and green light. !t seemed slightly elongated to the naked eye. it ~as not moving; he ~ent to get his 7 x 50 binoculars. In the binoculars (v~i presented, app~ently, some difficulty in focussing, since Mrs. sa!~ something to t he effect of "when he finally got the things focusses ..... ) t h e objec~ appeared a5 ~ green dome or flare above, a red dome or flare below, both flickering, and a horizontal row of lights between. Mrs. had previc~sly told the i~1estigator that both of them had counted six, but the nig nt of the interv:.e-..-~-ir. ified the number to "three or four" (he had heard of Mrs later sighting only that evening -see later). ?.~e object ~aa l ocated forty degrees east of north, and fifteen degrees up !ro~ e horizon, by rough fist-measurement by the. investigator: the land- mark ;;-s..=. t.l:e top of a nearby chimney which the object was very close to during the sig ing. The window faced straight north. D"..1ring the hour os the sighting, the object moved "five or six degrees" tcr..rard ""C!Je east. Finally the Beloungys went to bed. At about o445, Mrs awoke, and decided to look and see if the object were st.ill there. By standing very close to the window and looking east with the field glasses, she immediately saw ~hree groups of three objects each, very bright, interpreted as much closer tha=-. ~he previous object. She was frightened at first, because of the great i nc=ease in brightneas and the appearance of more objects. They remained per:-ectl.y motionless (the field-glasses were at this time pressed against the win~ow frame). Mrs. went back to bed, her husband not getti ng up ~0 see the objects. At 0645, the sun was right vhere she had seen the objects , and ~hey were no longer visible. After hearing the ~itnesses stories, the investigator asked to see the be~oom from which t he s i ghtings were made. The chimney was pointed out, and the ~pproximate locati o:: of the first object determined. The investigator, coecKing for possible reflections, asked if the window opened: the sighting was ~irough the ri t-h i half of the window, which opened by sliding to the lef~ (~est). Mr demonstrated how he lay back across the bed, and watc~eu the object witn the binoculars for an extended period; Mrs also ceno~strated ho~ she observed the object. Both were looking through the rigi1t-!!and pane, the haJf that opened, and was open that night. That window secti~:-l -.rs.s screened, a nd. the investigator noticed that some street-lights sho-w-e.:. 5. ~=oss-s:ta.ped :tistribution of reflections off the wires of the screen. He pc : ~his out to t he witnesses, and asked them to look at the street- ligh-:s tX'"olJ.gh the binoculars. Mrs. irmnediately "Why, that s just hCYw the object looked~" She was quite amazed. Mr. tried t he gJasses. Mr tried the glasses, and a greed that t he e ffect was t he s e. In the glasses definite diffraction colors could be seen in Be1oungy Sighting Page 3 August 3 both directions; predominantlY red and green. The light was flanked with a row of images on each side, and above and below to a somewhat lesser extent. The glasses were then tried on an airplane's running-lights, with even more pronounced agreement from Mrs that the effect of.multiple ~ges was like that of the previous night, although the color was diff~rent. The witi:esses were shown how the appearance changed when the line of sight was moved so i~ passed through the other half of the window, which did not open and hen~e had no screen Mrs. trated how she observed the objects at o445; she loo~:ed through the s~:-eened half of the window, nearly parallel to the screen; un~er these conditions, the diffraction effect horizontally would have been mu~h greater. Note that the three objects were each seen in triplicate; sbe drew all three se1.s with identi .. al spacing, indicating a lack of perspective. 1Vh ~his was pointei out, she corrected the drawing, or rather indicated a cor~ectio~, which the i~estigator made. Co~clusion: T~e first object vas probably Cap~lla, which is nearly circ.tmpola.r at this la~itude and at the time of the sighting was moving up and to the right, mostly to the right, or east. The flickering was scintilla- tio~; t~e diffraction effect in t~e binoculars tended strongly to accentuate and se~a_-a~e the red d green colors actually present in the scintillating The up-and-down and side-to-side movement noticed was probablY an effect o~ unsteadiness in holding the field-glasses; Mrs. watching the airplane exclaimed that it, too, was showing the same sort of motion, indicating clearly that she vas unaware of the motion of the binoculars, Beloungy Sighting August 3, 1966 and that she attributed the motion to the airplane she was watching (this was during the investigation). Neither witness had been aware of the effect of the scre~n, and both agreed that the appearance of distant lights through the screen ~ w~s ~losely simjlar to the first object seen the previous night. The second objects seen by Mr probably the cluster of pls. ~ats that is now prominent in the morning sky: Jupiter, Venus, and Mars are very close together, and at this writing (August 4) are drawing closer. The direc~ion is obviously correct, since Jupiter never departs far from the ecliptic, and a~ 0645 the sun was reported as being right where the objects had been, they were on the ecliptic. The tripling of the objects was undoubt- edly iue to the extreme a~gle of view through the screen, which would greatly incre~se the diffraction effect horizontally while not changing it appreciably i~ e vertical direc~io~. s impressed by the great brigh~ness of the objects on t~e ze~ond sighting; t:.-im.plication, therefore, the fi;-st object was much dimmer than e brightest of the three objects, Venus. Capella has a magnitude of +l, and !z i eed fainter an Venus, but is still very bright as stars go. We may conclude ~th considerable assurance that the sighting involved ast~o~c ei objects o~ly.