Fbi Screws Up Again New Mexico
The Dunn Solar Telescope in Sunspot, N.M. The site was airtight for over a calendar week after a security threat. NSO/Aureola/NSF hide caption
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NSO/Aura/NSF
The Dunn Solar Telescope in Sunspot, Due north.Thou. The site was closed for over a week after a security threat.
NSO/Aureola/NSF
A solar observatory in New Mexico reopened Monday after being airtight past authorities for x days — which spawned national interest and speculation into the cause of its evacuation.
Allow'due south get this out of the way: Scientists say that aliens were non involved.
On Sept. 6, the Sunspot Solar Observatory was all of a sudden airtight by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, the consortium that operates information technology, without public caption.
People who piece of work at the observatory, and those who live on the site, were asked to evacuate. The site's mail service role was also airtight.
The Otero County sheriff told the local newspaper that his office was alerted but not given any data.
"The FBI is refusing to tell us what'south going on," Sheriff Benny Business firm told the Alamogordo Daily News shortly after the closure. "We've got people up in that location (at Sunspot) that requested us to standby while they evacuate information technology. Nobody would really elaborate on any of the circumstances as to why. The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say."
"But for the FBI to get involved that quick and be so secretive about it, there was a lot of stuff going on upward in that location," he added. "There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers only nobody would tell us anything."
From in that location, it was off to the races. Combine the FBI, a powerful telescope and a location in rural Sunspot, N.Yard., and you've got all the ingredients for some rampant speculation — regime surveillance, aliens, etc.
"Why the FBI close the observatory?? People accept the right to know!!" one person demanded on the observatory's Google page.
The observatory, in Lincoln National Wood, about 170 miles due south of Albuquerque, is abode to the Dunn Solar Telescope. When it opened in 1969, it was the world's premier loftier spatial resolution optical solar telescope, the National Solar Observatory says. Though it's now considered a "legacy telescope," the Dunn "continues to be i of the most versatile, user-friendly setups in the globe," the observatory says.
New Mexico is already associated in some people's minds with unexplained phenomena. The observatory is about 85 miles southwest of Roswell, N.M., a boondocks long at the center of UFO lore.
So what did happen at Sunspot?
A security threat, though the specific nature of that threat remains unclear. According to a argument from Aureola, the consortium and the National Science Foundation decided to vacate the site temporarily because of a security issue:
"Aureola has been cooperating with an on-going law enforcement investigation of criminal activity that occurred at Sacramento Peak. During this time, we became concerned that a suspect in the investigation potentially posed a threat to the condom of local staff and residents. For this reason, AURA temporarily vacated the facility and ceased science activities at this location.
"The determination to vacate was based on the logistical challenges associated with protecting personnel at such a remote location, and the demand for expeditious response to the potential threat. Aureola determined that moving the small-scale number of on-site staff and residents off the mount was the most prudent and effective activeness to ensure their safety."
The consortium said that it recognizes that the lack of communication while the facility was being evacuated was "apropos and frustrating for some."
"However, our desire to provide additional information had to be balanced against the take a chance that, if spread at the fourth dimension, the news would warning the suspect and impede the law enforcement investigation. That was a run a risk we could non take," the argument says.
And the helicopter? House, the sheriff, told The Washington Post that Black Militarist helicopters aren't uncommon in the area.
A call to an FBI spokesperson was not immediately returned. A person at the agency's Albuquerque office said he had no information and could not comment.
The consortium said the site will have actress security for now, because of people showing up at the facility since its closure: "Given the pregnant corporeality of publicity the temporary closure has generated, and the consequent expectation of an unusual number of visitors to the site, we are temporarily engaging a security service while the facility returns to a normal working surround."
James McAteer, the New Mexico Land University professor who leads operations of the telescope at the site, said he was impressed by the theories that people had come up with for the closure.
"It was the first fourth dimension I've had to deny contact with Aliens and Death-by-solar-storm and clandestine tunnels and New communications via X-rays all at in one case," he wrote in an email to NPR.
The observatory'south reopening ways that researchers tin get to dorsum to doing what they do: staring at the sun.
"We cannot wait to get back to piece of work to show everyone the world grade research we do every twenty-four hour period at the telescope," McAteer said.
NPR's Emily Sullivan contributed to this report.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/09/17/648804508/after-mysterious-closure-solar-observatory-in-new-mexico-reopens
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