{"id":432197,"date":"2010-03-15T15:45:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T19:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/?p=12968"},"modified":"2010-03-15T15:45:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-15T19:45:43","slug":"erie-ufo-sounds-familiar-to-me-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/432197","title":{"rendered":"Erie UFO sounds familiar to me | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A wave of reports <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.theweek.com\/article\/index\/200781\/The_Cleveland_UFO_What_on_Earth\">is coming in<\/a> from the town of Euclid, Ohio, from folks there who are seeing a mysterious light hovering over Lake Erie and Cleveland. The light, they say, is very bright, lasts for a couple of hours, stays near the horizon, changes colors, and keeps coming back to the same spot night after night.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=X5Bthocaqf0\">Here&#8217;s an MSNBC report about it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"embeddedvideo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/X5Bthocaqf0&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;hd=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"><\/iframe><\/center><br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>Could it be an alien visitor from another world?<\/p>\n<p>No, I don&#8217;t think so. In fact, I think it <em>is<\/em> another world. Venus, to be specific. <\/p>\n<p>A Fort Wayne, Indiana website <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.wane.com\/dpps\/news\/strange\/ufo-sighting-caught-on-tape-in-ohio-jgr_3263531\">has an interview with one of the witnesses on video, and includes some still shots<\/a>. Everything in his description, including the photographs, makes me think he and the others are seeing Venus.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, Venus can be seen in the west &#8212; the direction to Lake Erie and Cleveland as seen in Euclid &#8212; shining brightly just after sunset. It is so bright it can be seen while the sky is still light (I&#8217;ve seen Venus in the middle of the day). It appears to hover. Changing atmospheric conditions can affect its color, especially when it&#8217;s low to the horizon. It can be seen night after night, in the same spot in the sky.<\/p>\n<p>Sound familiar?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying what these people are seeing is in fact Venus, but it sure fits everything I&#8217;ve heard in the news reports (sometimes the witnesses describe multiple lights, but when looking to the horizon, especially over a big city, it&#8217;s not too unlikely to see planes flying around). In the MSNBC report they talked to the FAA, the military, and others (including a UFO guy from England), but never talked to an astronomer. Hmmph. And note that in these news articles, Venus is never mentioned! That&#8217;s mighty peculiar, given how spectacular it is in the west after sunset. It&#8217;s really hard to miss. A likely explanation is that it&#8217;s not mentioned because it is, in fact, the culprit here.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m getting a kick out of just how positive so many people are that this is a flying saucer of some kind. I wonder how many of these folks actually are familiar with the night sky, and would recognize Venus when they see it? <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2009\/07\/21\/slamming-the-astronomers-should-see-ufos-myth\/\">That&#8217;s why I think<\/a> very few astronomers (pro or amateur) report UFOs: <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2008\/11\/25\/aliens-yes-ufos-no\/\">astronomers tend to know what they&#8217;re looking at in the sky<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The next time you hear a report like this, don&#8217;t jump to the conclusion that some interplanetary object is making a close encounter&#8230; because it may very well be interplanetary, but the encounter may not be terribly close.<\/p>\n<p><em>Tip o&#8217; the probe to Patrick Kent.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/TItbdvnw9kCUSKvncgPLT77FZn4\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/TItbdvnw9kCUSKvncgPLT77FZn4\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/TItbdvnw9kCUSKvncgPLT77FZn4\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/TItbdvnw9kCUSKvncgPLT77FZn4\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/BadAstronomyBlog\/~4\/Ld1XOwWnh3A\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/HzAYPl34XVo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A wave of reports is coming in from the town of Euclid, Ohio, from folks there who are seeing a mysterious light hovering over Lake Erie and Cleveland. The light, they say, is very bright, lasts for a couple of hours, stays near the horizon, changes colors, and keeps coming back to the same spot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}