Sunspot was hours away from the Trinity Site, where the first atomic weapon was detonated, and even farther from Area 51 two places that many conspiracy theorists said would certainly factor into anything weird going on at the observatory. When it does that the Sun will grow so large it will actually extend all the way out to Jupiter. Taylor-Lehman was working for a local paper when the initial evacuation took place, giving him a front-row seat for the events that followed. I think its paramount that we know what the threat is so we can provide safety. (House is known for his indelicate statements, drawing some controversy in an unrelated incident for writing on Facebook that he would kill anyone who messed with his family.). It screams I saw something I shouldnt have. Their sons name was broadcasted around the world in conjunction with an irredeemable crime, and while its not illegal or even unusual to divulge a suspects name before hes been charged, it was somewhat ethically questionable. A heliostat at the top of a 136-foot (41-meter) concrete tower directs sunlight downward to a primary mirror that is deep underground. Sunspot National Solar Observatory site on Sacramento . Though. It wasnt cuz Jorge couldnt keep it in his fucking pants! The explanations generally fell into the following camps: Other miscellaneous theories postulated that the closure had kicked off the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy, that the observatory was somehow connected to HAARP (the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a government research facility said to be able to control the weather), or even that the closure was some sort of viral marketing campaign by the observatory itself in order to attract more visitors. Not far from White Sands National Park, near the town of Cloudcroft, New Mexico, you'll find the Sunspot Solar Observatory. The Sunspot Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak was shut for 11 days for "a security issue," and its closure drew cheeky speculation that authorities were investigating the presence of UFOs. It's managed by the Association of Universities for Research in. But on Thursday, September 6, 2018, the attention of what seemed like the entire galaxy was focused here. The Historical Sunspot Record. We think theyre generated by molten metal sloshing around Earths core, but arent positive. NMSU Astronomy. In light of recent developments in the investigation, we have determined there is no risk to staff, and Sunspot Solar Observatory is transitioning back to regular operations as of September 17th, the press release said. Matthew Reisen. It fuses hydrogen to helium inside its core. It is very possible they saw a UFO or even direct evidence of alien life. Its free. Nobody was to be allowed back into the facility until further notice. As is the case with any research they do, the information theyve uncovered is promptly placed online and made available for anyone to use, McAteer said. Self-guided Tours from $10.00 per adult Explore Las Cruces with a Unique Scavenger Hunt by Zombie Scavengers Self-guided Tours from $20.00 per group (up to 10) SPECIAL OFFER Las Cruces Crusade Scavenger Hunt Self-guided Tours from $30.00 $18.00 per adult The area 3010 Coronal Loop, Sunspot, NM 88349-9700 Full view Best nearby Attractions Daisy Dobrijevic joined Space.com in February 2022 as a reference writer having previously worked for our sister publication All About Space magazine as a staff writer. The Apache Point Observatory maintains several telescopes used for astrophysics research. A new article by Dylan Taylor-Lehman at Narratively investigated the events that led to the evacuation and explored the theories that have arisen in the year since then. Water Let alone 11 days. We recognize that the lack of communications while the facility was vacated was concerning and frustrating for some, the observatorys press release stated. Sunspot Solar Observatory has just nine people working onsite these days. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). On Sept. 6, the Sunspot facility on Sacramento. Eventually it will get so big its outer layers wont be held down by gravity and it will expand to a Red Giant before ending its life in a fantastic planetary nebula. Aside from a press release and a few cursory comments by observatory staff, little more was said about the resolution to the mysterious closure. Wait, he really was the Janitor?! The Sun is a giant nuclear reactor. The sheriffs officers were told to stand guard for a little while longer, but they too soon left, leaving a ghost town of telescopes and empty dwellings at the top of the mountain. Astronomers use pulses from lasers at the observatory and a retroreflector on the Moon (left there by Apollo astronauts) to measure the distance between the Earth and Moon to within a few millimeters. The authorities suspicions were seemingly confirmed when a lack of activity on the IP address was found to correspond to the suspect being out of town for a wedding. Sunspots are our window into the sun's complicated magnetic interior, and they have fascinated solar observers for hundreds of years. Reuters and other media are reporting that the mysterious 11-day closure of Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico stemmed from an FBI investigation of a janitor suspected of using the. Large sunspot moving across the surface of the sun. While the man in question was fired and his familys cleaning contract was not renewed, he has not been charged with a crime or even arrested. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www.sidc.be/silso/ (opens in new tab)Simons, P. (2018, December 20). Drought A group of sunspots is known as an active region. As the sun rotates, these magnetic loop "rubber bands" get more wound up (both tighter and more complicated). These regions of the sun appear darker because they are cooler than their surroundings. It was only a matter of time before the killer struck at the facility, he said. Welcome to Sunspot Solar Observatory Visit Located at an altitude of 9200 ft in the scenic Lincoln National Forest, Sunspot Solar Observatory is home to gorgeous vistas, historical landmarks, and one of the largest active solar telescopes in the world. In 2016, an opportunity became available to build a university-based consortium led by New . A Janitor? An IP address was flagged by the New Mexico Attorney Generals Internet Crimes Against Children Unit for sharing 300 files of child pornography through a peer-to-peer network. NASA. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www.spaceweather.live/en/help/the-magnetic-classification-of-sunspots.html (opens in new tab), Royal Museums Greenwich. This observatory is really important and houses some of the best Astronomers and Scientists in the World. One fact remains clear. Sign up for our Newsletter, Love this Narratively story?Sign up for our Newsletter, 2012-2022 Narratively. Remote Sensing, Lunar Laser Ranging: a tool for general relativity, lunar geophysics and Earth science, Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser Ranging Station Joins the NASA Space Geodesy Network. Parsec vzw. But on Thursday, September 6, 2018, the attention of what seemed like the entire galaxy was focused here. Another video featured a man pointing out that he was being recorded by government drones as he strolled through the facility. The place was just heaving with people, he said of a recent event. According to the Chandra X-ray Center (opens in new tab), the earliest records of solar activity are from Chinese astronomers around 800 B.C. Parsec vzw. At the observatory and in the tiny self-contained village of Sunspot, populated by SSO researchers and employees, people ordinarily go about their business with little fanfare. It turned out that the two YouTubers, each of whom was convinced of the gravity of what they uncovered, were filming each other. How big is a sunspot? And the Sunspot houses were empty not because of the evacuation but because they had been unoccupied for decades. The only thing protecting the Earth is our magnetic field. Between the two facilities, they hoped, they would be able to study the Sun almost every day. There isnt a definitive answer, but fervent observers agree it is likely something sinister. According to the FBIs search warrant application, he complained about the lax security and unchanged lock codes, claimed that someone had stolen five rolls of toilet paper, and then said hed seen someone waiting in a truck in the parking lot late at night. Search: Sunspot Observatory Cover Up. Get breaking space news and the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more! The agencys conduct continued to rankle Sheriff House, who colorfully voiced his disapproval in an interview with local television station KVIA. 0:39. The Apache Point Observatory, which is operated by New Mexico State University and owned by the Astrophysical Research Consortium, is less than a mile from the Sunspot Observatory. Numerous unauthorized people walked onto the site while it was closed. The family now has to deal with its own internal difficulties while shouldering the ignominy of such an offense in their small town. I was a reporter at the Alamogordo Daily News when the observatory shut down. This period of severely reduced solar activity came to be known as the "Maunder minimum," after British astronomer Edward Walter Maunder, who along with his wife, Annie discovered the lack of activity from the records in 1890, according to The Times (opens in new tab). Visit the Observatory History As a result, after the war, HAO decided to secure funding for a new site in a location with weather that would compliment the conditions in Climax. There is some debate about who discovered sunspots. While all of these rumors and conspiracy theories were germinating, a week went by without any further official word about anything from anyone. The Sunspot Solar Observatory was shut down for 11 days for child porn? One video posted on YouTube contained drone footage of two mysterious men in black walking through the site. Sunspots can be monitored with daily hand-drawn sketches. Scientists classify sunspot groups to assess which are more likely to incite a solar flare or CME. Sunspots can be observed with the correct equipment and eye protection. Here Are 8 of the Best. Land, Image of the Day The Sunspot Solar Observatory houses the Dunn Solar Telescope, a high-resolution, vertical-axis telescope used to study solar cycles, sunspots, and flares. FBI agents showed up at the Sunspot solar observatory in tiny Sunspot, New Mexico, on Friday and shut down the facility, evacuating the local area, including the Sunspot post office. (n.d.). According to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (opens in new tab) (UCAR), if you could cut out a standard sunspot from the sun and place it in the night sky, it would appear as bright as a full moon. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/400yrs-spots.html#:~:text=Galileo%20and%20the%20German%20Jesuit,a%20telescope%20in%20December%201610 (opens in new tab), Gonzlez, N. (n.d.). So I decided to go to the other observatory on the same peak to see what the folks there had to say. Taylor-Lehman also notes that some of the conspiracy theories were accelerated due to a lack of local knowledge of the site. Could we miss one coming our way? On-site researchers had become much less abundant over the past several years, and AURA had been winding down operations at Sunspot even further as a new telescope and headquarters were being built in Hawaii. It gets slightly bigger and slightly hotter every year. More careful examination of the comments made by various theorists showed that their understanding of basic details about the observatory, the surrounding geography, and the scope of the observatorys work were wildly incorrect. Suggest an Edit NM 6563/Sunspot Hwy Phone 575-434-7190 The magnetic classification of sunspots. They can spawn eruptive disturbances such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Its Waxed Jacket Season. The news of the sudden closure of a space research facility by the U.S. government immediately went viral. Furthermore, random helicopters werent uncommon in the area, given the nearby military bases. Whatever the preferred explanation, the mystery was bolstered by posts about the webcams of other observatories as far-flung as the Canary Islands and Australia going down on the same day that Sunspot was evacuated, suggesting that other scientists had seen the same thing and were being silenced. By early May 2022, nearly a quarter million acres had burned in New Mexico, almost double the annual total of 2021. Sept. 19, 2018, 7:12 AM PDT By Seth Shostak For the past two weeks, mysterious goings-on at a New Mexico solar observatory have been hot news. A year later, David and Johannes Fabricius (father and son) independently discovered sunspots. This magnetic field is so strong it'll launch plasma from the sun thousands of miles high into large looping rivers of raining plasma. Many curious people assumed that the observatorys telescopes, looking out into the cosmos, must have detected something they shouldnt have. Sunspots have been observed for hundreds of years and continue to be the main focus for scientists who want to learn more about the solar cycle and assess the risk of space weather, such as solar flares and CMEs. The strong magnetic field inhibits the influx of hot, new gas from the sun's interior, causing sunspots to be cooler and appear darker than their surroundings, relatively speaking. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://est-east.eu/?option=com_content&view=article&id=924&Itemid=622&lang=en (opens in new tab), IPAC-Caltech. The FBI agents wrapped up their search of the facility with surprising rapidity, getting back into their vehicles and driving away as if their hasty arrival was playing in reverse. (Image credit: SILSO/Royal Observatory of Belgium), The Carrington Event: History's greatest solar storm, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, The sun's atmosphere: Photosphere, chromosphere and corona, World Data Center for the Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations, https://chandra.harvard.edu/edu/formal/icecore/The_Historical_Sunspot_Record.pdf, https://physicsworld.com/a/astronomers-see-star-enter-a-maunder-minimum-for-the-first-time/, https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/400yrs-spots.html#:~:text=Galileo%20and%20the%20German%20Jesuit,a%20telescope%20in%20December%201610, https://est-east.eu/?option=com_content&view=article&id=924&Itemid=622&lang=en, https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/12-How-big-is-a-sunspot-#:~:text=The%20average%20sunspot%20is%20about,many%20times%20larger%20that%20Earth, https://www.kahaku.go.jp/research/db/science_engineering/sunspot/, https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/the-classification-of-sunspots-after-malde.html, https://www.spaceweather.live/en/help/the-magnetic-classification-of-sunspots.html, https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/sunspots, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/husband-and-wife-team-behind-the-maunder-minimum-b2pts37bf, https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_171/512/, Scientists are working on an official 'alien contact protocol' for when ET phones Earth, On This Day In Space: Nov. 6, 1572: Tycho supernova discovered, Your monthly guide to stargazing & space science, Try a single issue or save on a subscription, Issues delivered straight to your door or device. The Sunspot Solar Observatory houses the Dunn Solar Telescope, a high-resolution, vertical-axis telescope used to study solar cycles, sunspots, and flares. A new batch of videos popped up online following the announcement, this time trying to sort through the closure and offering characteristically weird analyses of what it all meant, from a pedophile ring at the observatory to evidence of the imminent Christian rapture to an upcoming coronal mass ejection a blast of magnetic energy from the Sun with the capacity to seriously disrupt the Earths electronic grids (a type of event that has verifiably affected the Earth before). Fires, Image of the Day They and their cohorts took turns guarding the facility 24 hours a day and were allowed to roam the grounds but were not given any information about what prompted the evacuation in the first place. Praise SOL. The Solar Observatory Cover-Up Ryushin Malone reports he caught the FBI red-handed in their attempt to cover up a 2018 solar-observatory shutdown. Visitor numbers are up, and the attention the observatory received for nonscience reasons made the researchers redouble its scientific mission. Clandestine footage of these excursions that was posted on YouTube some by locals and some by people who had traveled from afar to investigate revealed airborne drones and mysterious men walking around. McIntosh and colleagues (McIntosh et al., 2014a, hereafter M2014) identified an event in the solar timeline that appeared to play a role in how sunspot cycle 23 (SC23) transitioned into Sunspot Cycle 24 (SC24). They are located in New Mexico. The next day, a researcher observed the janitor exiting the office the computer had been taken from. Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_171/512/ (opens in new tab). NMSU is leading a consortium of universities to continue operations of the Dunn Solar Telescope at the Sunspot Solar Observatory. New York, Retrieved May 24, 2022, from https://www.weather.gov/fsd/sunspots (opens in new tab). My initial investigation yielded seemingly contradictory situations: one silent, abandoned facility and another seemingly unaffected. (n.d.). At least one valid email address is required. Amanda Kooser/CNET Corners of the internet are atwitter about a possible alien coverup after. All told, it was closed for 11 days. Weve got people up there that requested us to stand by while they evacuate it. He repeatedly approached the employee throughout the day with questions about "missing items and lax security. The observatory is managed by AURA, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, which is maintained by New Mexico State University and financed in part by the National Science Foundation. She admitted that it would be difficult to ensure that nobody snuck in, given that the facility is surrounded by woods. Recently, the publics primary interest in Sunspot has been the observatorys family-friendly activities and nighttime astronomy lessons, and McAteer is happy with that. The FBI has not spoken about the case at all in the media, and messages left with the FBIs Albuquerque office and directly with the agent who applied for the search warrant went unreturned. She said that they had been alerted to Sunspots closure but had been told that there was no danger to their facility and they could operate as normal. Human Presence. The topology of the sun's magnetic field and the 22-year cycle. In an age where prominent conspiracy theorists occupy a major role in the collective American imagination, thats far less surprising than it should be. I sat in my car near the entrance, watching for any sign of movement. Forty-five minutes went by without a sign of another person or vehicle. Dr. James McAteer, the facilitys director, gave the order to round up the approximately two-dozen people at the site and take them down the mountain at the behest of the FBI. As the sun rotates at different speeds, with the equator rotating faster than the poles, a "differential rotation" is created, according to Royal Museums Greenwich (opens in new tab). Its not hard to see why the 2018 evacuation of the Sunspot Solar Observatory near Alamogordo, New Mexico has gotten lodged in the minds of so many and spawned more than a few conspiracy theories. Sunspots are cooler regions on the surface of the sun that can spawn eruptive disturbances, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Observatory director Dr. James McAteer does acknowledge the closures positive impact on the facility, as it drew more attention to Sunspots telescopes. That'll be a bad day. Not long after the papers editor posted a preliminary story noting that the observatory was closed, I grabbed my camera and a notebook and headed out to try to find out what was going on. Whether you are visiting the area. Celebrating 400 years of sunspot observations. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sunspots are dark spots on the sun that appear briefly and are usually followed by large solar flares. Our Sun is a medium size star. Among them is a 2.5-meter optical telescope used as part of the Sloan Digital Survey, an ambitious sky-mapping project that has produced the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever made. Image of the Day In regards to AURA and NSOs handling of matters, they proved to be unprofessional in the opinion of the family. I can tell you with absolute certainty that a janitor at a government funded grant makes enough money to have their own computer or phone. But the Earth is only safe for as long as we have a working magnetic field, and who the hell knows how long thatll last? Sunspot positions also change throughout the solar cycle. The earliest known drawings of solar activity appeared many years later, in 1128, in John of Worcester's chronicle. A big deal was made of Sunspots businesses and post office being evacuated, for example, as if an entire town was ordered to leave, but in reality they were all part of the same small facility the businesses were Sunspots visitors center and the post office was a room in a house on the site. Yes, lots of people said aliens. Since 1976, the National Solar Observatory has operated the observatory on Sacramento Peak located in Sunspot, New Mexico for the National Science Foundation as a premier solar research facility available to scientists in the United States and abroad.

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