Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

CAELESTIA was initiated in 1994. Its purpose: to collect, investigate and document reports of unidentified aerial phenomena. The name CAELESTIA is borrowed from Latin and can best be translated as “affairs of the heavens”. The general idea behind the initiative was – and still is – that reports of “Unidentified Flying Objects” deserve a more correct treatment, be it from the scientific community or from the UFO community itself.

Special notice to the superb picture galleries, with an extensive list of objects and phenomena that can be mistaken for UFOs. The resarch & discussion also has some nice work, including an evaluation of the Belgian UFO wave, as as the case examples.

[via Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos]

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After looking at a picture of it, I had some trouble believing an animal like this was real. Only a video and some Googling convinced me.

Now, that was obviously the inspiration for the Nasobema, a fictitious creation.

[via PD, Neatorama]

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“The Future: the Superbrain
The region of the brain responsible for the memory, consciousness and complex thought will develop itself, enlarging the forehead. On schools, telepathy and telekinesis skills will be trained. Brain tissue transplants will be performed in case of sickness and accidents. Anesthetics will be applied with electrodes.”

I found this on a science magazine published in Brazil in the beggining of the 1990s, titled “Descobrir” (Discovery), though I’m not certain if it was a translation of Discovery magazine (I guess not). I couldn’t help, I had to share it.

As you can see, the illustrator is one Joe Lawrence, but I couldn’t find any reference to him on the internet. There are a lot of other illustrations by him about the future, very paleo-future like, and the magazine wasn’t that much for wild paranormal claims, which only makes this gem much more priceless.

“O brave new world! That has such people in’t!”

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Location: Pirinopolis, Goias, Brazil
Date: February 2005

Regina Sylvia sent us this series of three amazing photos that she described as “UFOs disguised as clouds“. We suggested to her that they could have been just clouds, and she told us that:
“This ‘cloud’ was something strange… If it was just a cloud… I don’t know, but on this day we were going to the Pirineus (in Pirinopolis, Goias), and as we stopped at the city we saw this first cloud. Huge, amazing. Afterwards on our house, around two hours later, we saw the same cloud, huge, but it wasn’t just one, as there was another, smaller, a little to the left. The night came and… another cloud appeared in the same place, lit as if the Moon was behind it.”

At first sight, we thought these were just common lenticular clouds, as we told Regina. These clouds are formed with strong, vertical winds on irregular terrain. They also resemble “mountain cap” clouds, formed over the top of mountains.

But the images are not like the common lenticular clouds — as noted by Andreia Tschiedel, who remarked that these clouds are joined closely by other types of clouds. The first image shows a cumulus clouds along with the intriguing semi-spherical, translucent cloud. Were they UFOs disguising as clouds? Well, we Googled some more, and found a possible prosaic explanation.

They are Pileus clouds. “Pileus caps are made of ice crystals high in the troposphere. They form as a slab of air is shoved upward, in the shape of a dome or cap, just above a rapidly rising convective tower. Moisture in the dome condenses directly into an ice fog as the air rises and cools, forming the pileus. Next, the convection shoots right through the pileus layer. The lifted layer above the convective tower can’t be too dry (must have high humidity), or the pileus cap won’t develop.”

As images may be worth more than words, we present the image of the month for May 2005 of the Cloud Appreciation Society, taken by Justin Moore:

(source: CAS Cloud of the Month, May 2005)

With thanks to Regina Sylvia for the beautiful images.

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Despite some initial skepticism, which suggested the huge crater found on September 15 in Peru could be the result of other phenomena, local scientists confirmed this Tuesday that it was indeed caused by a meteorite.

According to José Macharé, of the Institute of Geology, “soon after the first observations made in the spot we verified that it was a rock meteorite … if definitely is a meteorite”, he told AFP (shorter version in English  here). He further noted that “it seems that the meteorite fell and heated the water, making it boil for ten minutes and mixing it with the soil (which may have sulfur and arsenic in low concentrations), liberating a grey vapor, whose components we still don’t know about”. That could explain the much reported illnesses described both by locals and even some local authorities that visited the place.

Furthermore, engineer Renán Ramírez, of the Peruvian Institute of Nucelar Energy, assured that there is no abnormal radioation in the area. Like Macharé he suggested the illnesses may have been caused by the fumes coming from the heat generated by the impact boiling the water in the soil. It’s probably not related to the meteorite itself.

But this whole ongoing story sure sparked a lot of interest. Among many wild speculations, one of the most curious was aired by WDIM:

American Spy Satellite Downed In Peru As US Nuclear Attack On Iran Thwarted
Russian Military Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that one of the United States most secretive spy satellites, the KH-13, targeting Iran was ‘destroyed in its orbit’ with its main power generator powered by the radioactive isotope Pu-238 surviving re-entry and crashing in a remote region of the South American Nation of Peru, and where hundreds are reported to be ill from radiation poisoning.
Western media reports are stating that the US spy satellite debris hitting Peru was caused by a meteor …
Most astonishing about these reports, however, are that they state that it was the Americans themselves who destroyed their own spy satellite with the attack upon it being made by the United States Air Forces’ 30th Space Wing located at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

As reported above, there is in fact no abnormal radiation readings in the area, and multiple different institutions and local experts analyzing the site agree that it was a meteorite. The WDIM website is full of similarly unsupported claims.

Related to it, some days before the Peruvian meteorite, James Oberg had pointed in the Whispers list a crater in Kazakhstan that was actually man-made, though not intentional:

A Proton/Breeze M rocket, carrying the JCSAT-11 comsat for JSAT Corp. of Tokyo, Japan, blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sept. 6, 2007. The launch vehicle’s second stage failed to separate, and one of the engines on the rocket had not functioned properly, leading to the termination of the flight at T+135 seconds, as vehicle was 76 kilometers above the Earth surface.

The failed rocket impacted in an uninhabited area, resulting in explosion and several fires in the grasslands, however it caused no casualties or property damage. A disinfecting group arrived to the impact site, discovering two or three fragments estimated at 400 kilograms in mass, according to Kazakh officials.

It was estimated that at the moment of the crash, the remnants of the rocket still contained 218 tons and 979 kilograms of toxic propellant. The main impact crater was estimated to be 20 meters deep and 45 meters in diameter. [source]

Bigger than the Peruvian crater. So, space junk is interesting, but as everyone pointed out, nothing beats space zombies.

UPDATE: Phil Plait suggests the Peruvian crater may have been actually the result of a Scud missile, which the Peruvian government is rumored to have obtained. Well, that’s a much more reasonable speculation than a nuclear ultra-secret American satellite.

But I don’t know. All those scientists would have to be part of the “conspiracy”, and the Scud missile would have to have created one hell of a explosion. More  than 200 tons of propellant created the 45m crater in Kazakhstan.

The Peruvian crater has 30 meters, and though it does resemble the Kazakh one, a Scud missile has a launch weight of some few tons, and a warhead of less than a ton. It’s more interesting than mere space junk, surely.

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