Re: Planet X on CNN

In Article <[email protected]> David Tholen wrote:
> Steve Havas writes:
>> The dark, diffuse or 'fuzzy' object I saw was in the
>> upper right corner near the edge of view.
>
> Could easily be a lens flare.

Same lens flare at three different observatories, one from FRANCE, one
from VANCOUVER, and one from FLAGSTAFF, all on different dates?  All
three looking at the moving coordinates given by a woman who would not
know what end of a scope to look into, to the 5th and 6th decimal place.

    RA 5.16784 Dec 16.57943 on February 15, 2001

    Wed, 07 Feb 2001 (France)
         The Neuchatel observatory got it. They are very excited,
         wondering if it is a comet or a brown dwarf, through the
         latest coordinates you gave.

    RA 5.151245 Dec 16.55743 on April 1, 2001

    Wed, 04 Apr 2001 (Flagstaff)
         Lo and behold, there appeared a faint blip not too far off
         center. I looked long and hard but wasn't sure if I was
         imagining it or not. I asked a friend who had come along
         to take a look and told him what to look for. He said he
         maybe saw something. I asked the operator if he would
         look in the same fashion. He looked carefully for a couple
         of minutes and confirmed what I saw. I took another
         look to satisfy myself. Yes, there was definitely something
         there. I had the operator center the telescope on the faint
         object so that we could get the coordinates more
         precisely and then I checked a third time to make sure
         we were talking about the same thing. We were; the elusive
         blip was centered now.

    RA 5.143675 Dec 16.421739 on April 15, 2001

    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 (Vancouver)
         Near the center I see nothing that I think looks like
         [Planet X] (just a couple stars) but at the very top right
         corner if I moved my head I could see what appeared
         to be a darkish, diffuse, round spot, fairly large

If that's a coincidence, what about the coincidence that after the first
sighting, the next two observatories had scafolding blocking the scope
so that it supposedly could not be turned to seach the skies at the
coordinates (thought the persistent found a way around that block).

    Wed, 04 Apr 2001 (Flagstaff)
        On the night of Sunday April 1st 2001, I reserved the
        historic Clark 24" telescope at the Lowell observatory in
        Flagstaff, AZ, for my own private viewing. As it turns
        out, the telescope operator was unable to point the Clark in
        the direction of Orion because there was a scaffold in the
        way which only the operator's supervisor was allowed
        to move. ...  In any event the operator was determined
        to give me my money's worth and he opened up the
        McAllister telescope, a newer but smaller scope with a 16"
        mirror (f3 primary, f18 system, built in 1963). We
        trained the big do-hickey on the Coordinates given
        for April 1 2001:

    Sun, 8 Apr 2001 (Vancouver)
        I called the observatory around 7:30 and spoke to some
        guy and asked if it was okay to look at a object near
        the constellation Orion. He said that there was some
        large pipe that had been placed in front of the observatory
        and was not sure if he could swing the telescope in that
        direction but that we  might be able to see something.