MSNBC ARTICLE 'COMET STIRS UP TERRESTRIAL TEMPEST'

Thu, 05 Dec 1996 18:07:40 -0500
Source: MSNBC

Comet Stirs Up Terrestrial Tempest

Believers hint at alien mystery;
skeptics see flaws and fakery

By Alan Boyle  

It sounds like a story line straight from 'The X-Files': A 
smattering of highly enhanced pictures, mostly taken by amateur 
astronomers, turn up a mysterious light accompanying a comet 
through space. True believers get the word out over the Internet 
and talk radio, while the scientific establishment tries to 
explain away the discrepancies. The war of words soon escalates, 
with charges of cover-ups and countercharges of fakery flying 
through the ether.

The truth is out there — about 271 million miles out there, in 
fact, and getting closer. Like the hot gases that surround a 
comet's core, rumors and ridicule are surrounding the HaleBopp 
comet as it swings around the sun and heads back out into deep 
space.

Much of the controversy focuses on a photograph taken by Houston 
amateur astronomer Chuck Shramek and posted on the Internet in 
midNovember. It shows the comet with a bright object nearby - a 
feature that has come to be known as the 'Saturnlike object' 
because of what seems to be an oblique ring jutting out from 
each side of the circle.

Shramek contended this was a large, mysterious sphere moving in 
tandem with the comet. Further claims soon surfaced from various 
sources: that the object was sending out radio signals, that it 
was a hollow spaceship, that the government was withholding 
photos of the comet and its 'companion' taken by the Hubble 
Space Telescope, even that a prominent unnamed astronomer would 
confirm the companion's existence this week.
         
Among those championing Shramek's claims are the Farsight 
Institute in Atlanta, which promotes a mental technique known as 
scientific remote viewing; and a radio talk show moderated by 
Art Bell, who specializes in subjects that would warm the hearts 
of 'XFiles' fans and others who believe in UFOs.

Among those discounting Shramek's photo are NASA's Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory and Alan Hale, one of the comet's 
discoverers. Another is Russell Sipe, an amateur astronomer in 
the Los Angeles area who has maintained a Web site on HaleBopp 
for the past year.

Sipe says the mysterious companion is nothing more than a 
faraway star that Shramek failed to account for in his 
photograph - SAO 141894, to be exact. In posts to the newsgroup 
sci.astro, others are less charitable, contending that Shramek 
altered his photograph to insert the Saturnlike object. Sipe and 
other astronomers say the Saturnian rings are actually 
diffraction spikes - a fairly common optical effect captured by 
the photographic process.

Shramek vehemently rejects Sipe's claims. 

Efforts to contact Shramek by telephone and email have been 
unsuccessful, and his Web page was knocked out of commission by 
overwhelming traffic. He has been quoted as saying that he was 
'shocked at some of the personal attacks on me.'

For his part, Sipe says he weathered 150 hate letters via email 
on the night of Art Bell's Nov. 19 radio show about HaleBopp and 
the next morning.

"There is a story way beyond the fact that this guy 
misidentified a star," Sipe said in an interview. "There seem to 
be some people trying to whip up some sort of millennial 
hysteria."

Complicating the issue are other photographs that appear to show 
companions to the comet. For example, there is a Hubble photo 
that astronomers say shows a chunk of material being sloughed 
away from the comet.

And then there are shots taken by amateur astronomers in 
Albuquerque and by the National Astronomical Observatory of 
Japan: In those cases, skeptical observers believe the 
'companion' was actually created during the process of enhancing 
the photos. The technical debate centers on CCD photography, a 
computerized method for enhancing a series of raw telescopic 
images.

The tale of the comet is taking on a life of its own on the 
Internet: Scores of astronomers are posting HaleBopp photos on 
the World Wide Web, and the debate is spreading on newsgroups 
from sci.astro to alt.prophecies.nostradamus.

Meanwhile, HaleBopp continues its silent approach, coming to 
within 125 million miles of Earth. At its brightest, the comet 
could rival the star Sirius, although observations will be 
complicated by the fact that its projected position will be 
relatively close to the sun.

And in a twist worthy of FBI Agent Fox Mulder himself, the best 
viewing should come right around April Fool's Day.
  
 © 1996 MSNBC


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