How Did They Debunketh Me? Let Me "Counter" the Ways! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- They: There is an 8th to 9th magnitude star in the position of the "anomalous" object imaged by Shramek. He mistook the star for the object. Shramek: There is a star in that position, but what I saw was far brighter than 8th or 9th magnitude. It was so bright, it was visible before the sky was completely dark (my computer guided scope can point to objects automatically without the need to visually find them first so I can point my scope before it gets dark.) It was so bright and strange I began to pray. Yes, it scared me. In my 40 years of amateur astronomy, I have never been scared by a star. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- They: CCD imagers tend to be overly sensitive in the red and longer wavelengths of light. Since the star in the position of the "object" was a red giant, Shramek's CCD produced a brighter image. Shramek: CCD imagers are indeed more sensitive in the longer wavelengths of light (red and infrared.) This is why I used a special filter to reduce the long wavelength sensitivity on my CCD. Additionally, I also shot the comet pictures through a green filter. This filter gave me a better more detailed image of the comet's nucleus region and jets. It also would have reduced the brightness of any red star to a considerable degree. Indeed, I took pictures of the same region of the sky a few days after I imaged the object. I found the star the "real astronomers" claimed was the object I had imaged, but it was very dim. It was certainly not the anomalous object I had imaged next to the comet on the night of November 14, 1996. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- They: Shramek was way out of line to give any kind of meaningful size estimate of the object. "Stars" are tiny points of light. Their apparent "size" as circles of light is an illusion caused by the point like image spreading during a prolonged exposure. This is true whether the image is done on film or a CCD. Shramek: True, stars do get bigger as the exposure gets longer. This is a wonderful proof that I did not image a star. I took 161 exposures of the comet and it's companion. The exposures ranged from 1 to 5 seconds and in every exposure, the object was the same size. If it had been a star, the image would have grown larger with the longer exposures. This is also why I prefer to take short exposures and layer them together electronically. This technique reduces the tendency for star images to expand and grow. This is why I like CCD imaging, you can electronically prevent stars from getting huge and yet still image very dim objects by layering many pictures. For a more detailed explanation of my size estimate of the "companion" click here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- They: There should have been apparent movement in the comet and the "companion" during the time Shramek took the pictures. Shramek: I took 161 pictures between 5:55 pm and 6:27 pm during the night of November 14, 1996. The first ten minutes were not good shots because it was still rather light outside. The last few minutes were not good shots as the comet was setting behind some trees in my yard. That only left about 15 to 20 minutes of good shots of the comet and "companion." At the resolution and power I was shooting at, this was only about 1 pixel of movement on my CCD. Not enought to make any conclusion about the absolute movements of the objects. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- They: Shramek made a number of outrageous and insulting claims and statements on the various internet news groups. Shramek: After I made my initial newsgroup posting on November 14 along with my picture and asked, "does anyone know what this thing is next to the comet?" - I never again posted anything on any newsgroup. There were some people who were apparently impersonating me - some with apparent good intentions, others not. Some also claimed they were my "assistants" - I had no assistants for my observations. I have seen these so called "quotes" from me show up in the strangest places. It's very weird to be quoted about things you never said. The usual internet "rumor" distribution system from anonymous types was no surprise, but a lot of false quotes were spread by publishing types who should have known better. At first I was depressed and outraged about this, now it seems rather funny. This is why I am doing this page, to set the record straight. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- They: Are you planning on taking any legal action? Shramek: No, that would be foolish. I am not licensed to practice law. I'll let this real lawyer do that. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- They: I hear it really hurt your feelings when you were actually denounced and ridiculed by Alan Hale! Shramek: It did for awhile. I met him about ten years ago and he seemed so nice then and of course, all America loved him as "The Skipper" along with his little buddy "Gilligan." Proof #1 - What I Imaged Was Far Brighter than an 8th or 9th Magitude Star [Image] The picture on the left is the original image I released on the internet. It's made up of 12 exposures of 3 seconds each electronically overlayed on top of each other to reduce noise and make a cleaner image. The image on the right is the very same composite picture only the gray levels are processed differently to bring out differences in brightness between the comet nucleus and the "companion." They are processed in a "linear" manner and not "stretched" in anyway to artificially enhance brightness differences. The "companion" is at least ten times brighter than the nucleus of the comet. If I had imaged the star that so many "astronomers" say I had then the brightnesses would have been about the same. As you can easily see, the "companion" is still a fully saturated "white" while the comet almost fades to invisibility. This comparison clearly shows the "companion" is conservatively 10 to 20 times brighter than the nucleus of the comet. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proof #2 - Bright Star Images Grow and Expand During Longer Exposures [Image] To those who claim the image of the "companion" is merely a bright star which expanded because of the exposure time I offer the following pictures. On the night of November 14, I imaged over 160 images of the comet and its "companion." The exposures ranged from 1 to 5 seconds. I like short exposures because they lessen the chance of bright stars blooming or expanding on the image. The top picture was a 1 second exposure, the bottom was a 5 second exposure. A bright star would have grown in size greatly between these two exposures but this did not happen. Except for a better view of the dimmer "edge" of the "companion" the images are the same size. Also note the "rings" or "spikes" are about the same size, showing they are not some anomaly in the imaging system due to exposure timing. Other Anomalous Pictures The Strangest Picture of all was taken by the Hubble. Shortly after it's release in October of 1995, there was suddenly a lack of good recent Hubble pictures! [Image] After the release of this picture, JPL explained the two bright spots by saying one of them was a "chunk" ejected from the comet. Yet the comet was far too far from the sun for thermal or gravitational tides to account for this kind of action. More than any other picture, this picture clearly shows a comet like object in orbit around another body. It's a beautiful picture of a comet in orbit with it's tail maintaining a near perfect circle as it orbits. This view is nearly head on to the comet. NASA also tried to explain the "pinwheel" appearance of this picture by saying the comet was spinning - like a lawn sprinkler and causing it's tail and the mystery "chunk" to spiral off. Yet, all recent observations of the comet show it is not spinning. What made it stop spinning? This too is a major question. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Image] This is a strange picture indeed. I don't think they meant for this one to get out. It was taken July 16, 1996 by the Tiede Observatory in the Canary Islands. The dark object at the center of the comet is an optical device to prevent the bright nucleus from over exposing the comet and losing details of the "jets." The diagonal orange and dark lines are the result of the telescope following the comet against a background of stars (in highly enhanced and processed color.) But what the hell is that dark circle in the 10 o'clock position from the comet that is not streaked like the stars and apparently moving with the comet? Notice also that the "jet" from the comet heading toward that thing appears to be influenced by the shape of the "thing." It looks as if the "jet" expanded there to get around the "thing." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Comet's Mysterious Eyes [Image] Just days after the above picture was released, three amateur astronomers in New Mexico took this amazing picture. They used a 16 inch telescope with a CCD imager to reveal something very strange appeared "near" the comet nucleus for 10 to 20 minutes and then disappeared. I put the word near in quotes because the actual distance if the object were near the comet would be on the order of hundreds of thousands of kilometers. This anomaly has not been explained. It is not a background star as photos taken at nearly the same time reveal no star there. It is also not a CCD hot spot as those are most often just one single pixel that is bad. This anomaly spans a number of pixels and its brightness diminishes as the distance from the hottest pixel increases. Ironicly, this picture was displayed by a group of astronomers who had nothing but ridicule for my picture. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Image] And this is really interesting. It's a picture taken by a half meter telescope in Japan (about 20 inches.) The picture was taken in April of 1996. The bright spot in the two o'clock position from the comet was first described as an anomaly. The picture was displayed that way for 6 months. Later, when the comet and the "companion" started getting some attention thanks to Art Bell and the internet, the Japanese did some backtracking. They called the vertical rod emanating from the "object" a flaw in the CCD imager and said the "companion" was really a star. If the vertical dark spire is really a CCD flaw, then why does it have edges that appear brighter then the nearby comet coma? A flaw would simply produce a dark line - not "outlined" in a lighter color. Also, the "object" appears to have two faint comet like jets in the 8 and 4 o'clock positions. This picture has since completely disappeared from the Japanese web site it was displayed on for many months. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- And Check This Report From Some Skywatchers in Arizona On Saturday night, Dec. 7th, a small group of us from MUFON AZ went out to our desert skywatch location to look for comet HB. We spotted first with binoculars a little after sunset. We had to wait for the sky to darken in the west. It was low in the west, maybe 15 deg. above the horizon and just a little north of the Milky Way. We had three telesopes. Our best telescope was the Celestron C-8. The consensus of opinion is that HB has a companion. Now Alan Hale said to go out and look for ourselves. We did, but it still looks like there is a second bright object near HB! We switched to a 187X power eyepiece to look at it one last time before it descended into western haze. AS a footnote, we also enjoyed looking at the rings of Saturn, the ring nebula in Lyra - this is just south of the bright star Vega, and the galaxy in Andromeda. Sincerely, Bill Hamilton