A study of a broad astronomical survey of the sky conducted before any artificial satellites were set aloft has discovered that “transients”, star-like points of light that appear briefly in the sky, appeared in the pre-1957 survey’s recordings, despite there being no man-made objects in orbit at the time. The study also found that there was a “small but statistically-significant” association between the appearance of these “short-lived star-like transients” and both nuclear weapons testing and UFO sightings.
Launched in 2017, the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project has focused its efforts on cataloguing a phenomenon referred to as transients, sources of light in the sky that have either dimmed considerably or disappeared altogether over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In an effort to eliminate interference by man-made satellites from the equation, VASCO’s latest study focused on data collected during the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I) that was conducted between November 19, 1949 and April 28, 1957, a period that predated the October 4, 1957 launch of humanity’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1.
Through their analysis of the photographic plates produced by POSS-1, VASCO identified nearly 100,000 transients, consisting of “short-lived transients (lasting less than one exposure time of 50 minutes)” that were “absent in images taken shortly before the transients appear and in all images from subsequent surveys,” according to the study text.
“In some cases multiple transients appear in a single image, exhibiting characteristics not easily accounted for by prosaic explanations (e.g., gravitational lensing, gamma ray bursts, fragmenting asteroids, [or] plate defects).”
Because the cause of the transients “remains unknown and cannot be directly tested due to their historical nature,” the team sought to shed some light on their possible origins through other means by correlating nuclear test detonations and documented UFO reports that occurred on the same day that the transients were photographed.
In the six years between the commencement of nuclear testing in 1951 and the 1957 launch of Sputnik-1 “at least 124 above-ground nuclear tests were conducted by the United States (U.S.), Soviet Union, and Great Britain,” the study stated. These tests were of interest to VASCO’s researchers because “in some circumstances, nuclear radiation is known to cause a visible glow (i.e., Cherenkov radiation).”
“Consistent with this concept, glowing “fireballs” in the sky were reported in multiple instances to occur shortly after nuclear tests in locations where significant nuclear fallout was expected,” according to the study. Their analysis found that “significantly more transients were observed on dates within a nuclear testing window… than outside of a nuclear testing window,” with their appearance being 45 percent more likely during a testing window than for flashes appearing outside of a testing window.
Although this doesn’t explain whether the transients are UFOs attracted to nuclear events or an undocumented phenomenon produced by the detonations themselves, the fact that the anomalies were nearly three times more likely to appear during nuclear testing is quite telling.
The researchers also uncovered “an intriguing incidental finding” when analyzing the transient-nuclear testing relationship: “The last date on which a transient was observed within a nuclear testing window in this dataset was March 17, 1956, despite there being an additional 38 above-ground nuclear tests in the subsequent 13 months of the study period.”
When it came to correlating UFO reports with transient appearances, the team found that “UAP reports were so common” that at least one was submitted on nearly nine out of ten of the dates covered by the study, rendering such an analysis useless; instead, they decided “to test associations between the number of UAP reports and number of transients observed on a given date,” to see if the volume of transient appearances corresponded with spikes in UFO reports.
Although the correlation wasn’t quite as strong as was with nuclear testing, the team found that there was “an 8.5% increase in the number of transients observed” for each additional UFO report made on any given date. Additionally, “dates with at least one UAP report and that were within a nuclear testing window displayed the highest total number of transients,” suggesting that “associations of UAP reports and nuclear testing with[the] number of observed transients may be additive.”
The VASCO team offered two prosaic explanations for the transients: the first “involves an unexpected and previously undocumented atmospheric phenomenon triggered by nuclear detonations or related to nuclear fallout that may serve as a stimulus for some UAP reports and appears as transients on astronomical images”; however, the authors point out that such a phenomenon “would be likely to result in a streak on the image over the 50 minute exposure, yet all transients appear as distinct point sources rather than streaks.”
The second involves the long-standing association between UFOs and nuclear activity, suggesting that “transients are artificial objects either in high-altitude orbits around Earth or at high altitudes within the atmosphere.”
“Our findings provide additional empirical support for the validity of the UAP phenomenon and its potential connection to nuclear weapons activity, contributing data beyond eyewitness reports,” the study authors conclude. “The possibility that some transients may represent UAP events captured on photographic plates prior to the launch of the first artificial satellite cannot be ruled out.”