Wednesday 19 October 2011

Was The First Photographed UFO A Comet?

image credit

On August 12, 1883, Mexican astronomer José Bonilla was preparing to study the Sun at the recently opened Zacatecas Observatory. However, the Sun's surface was marred by numerous objects quickly travelling across its disk. Over the course of the day and the next, Bonilla exposed several wet plates to take images of the 447 objects he would observe.

They weren't released publicly until January 1st, 1886 when they were published in the magazine L'Astronomie. Since then, UFOlogists have crowned these photographs as the first photographic evidence of UFOs. The chief editor of L'Astronomie passed the observations off as migrating animals, but a new study proposes the observation was due to the breakup of a comet that nearly hit us.

(via Look At This...)

1 comment(s):

Gareth said...

"UFOlogists have crowned these photographs as the first photographic evidence of UFOs."

And indeed they were. The objects were flying (or at least moving through space) and they were not identified. As such they were very definitely UFOs.

The problem I have is one of language. Too many people use the term UFO to mean alien spacecraft, when it means no such thing. Just because we see a "flying" object that we can't identify does not mean it is an alien spacecraft.