UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

JunoCam participant Matt Brealey wrote about this image: "An image constructed from the perijove 1 raw images, using common Visual Effects techniques, in The Foundry's 'Nuke' compositing software."

Credit: NASA, SwRI, MSSS & Matt Brealey copyright CC BY

A camera flying aboard NASA's current mission to Jupiter is snapping stunning new images of the gas giant's stormy surface, and enabling members of the public to take an active role in this historic mission.

The Juno probe is flying closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft has done in history, coming to within about 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) of the giant's stormy cloud tops. Its primary science mission is to gather information about the planet's interior — peering through its thick cloud layers and all the way down to its rocky core.

The JunoCam instrument is an exception: It takes pictures of the surface of Jupiter's cloud tops. Its mission is primarily to serve as an outreach tool: The data that is sent back to Earth is made available to the public, and "citizen scientists" are welcome to process the images and try to learn from them. Looking ahead, members of the public will be able to vote on which features JunoCam should eye next. [Jupiter Shines in Scientific and Artistic Images by Citizen Scientists (Gallery)]

The creators of the JunoCam outreach program wanted to "involve the public in every aspect of what an imaging team would ordinarily be doing," according to Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator and head of the JunoCam team. Hansen discussed the project during a press briefing at the 2016 meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS DPS) in Pasadena, California.

People who participate in JunoCam get to see what scientists go through during a mission — "the good days and the more challenging days, and to sort of live our lives with us," Hansen said. The goal is to allow the public to join the mission "in a participatory way, not a passive way."

Juno arrived at the Jupiter system in August, and its orbit is highly elongated, so that it comes very close to Jupiter (for only a matter of hours), and then swings far out into space. This path allows the probe to loop in between the planet's cloud tops and a ring of very intense radiation that wraps around Jupiter, which could easily destroy the electronics on board. Such a path also brings Juno closer to Jupiter than any probe in history. Juno is currently on a 53-day orbit, but it may still drop down to a 14-day orbit.

So far, JunoCam has only sent one batch of data back to Earth (since Juno has only made one close flyby with its instruments turned on). The JunoCam team posted "raw images" to the JunoCam website, and already public participants have used them to post dozens of processed images to the website. Some of the images have been processed to make it easier to see storms and physical features in Jupiter's clouds; others have been processed to create visually engaging works of art.

**This detailed image is a collaboration between image processor Gerald Eichstädt and astronomer John Rogers.**
**Credit: NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / John Rogers copyright CC BY**

Citizen scientists

On the JunoCam website, people can submit processed images, and then discuss their results and techniques in the discussion section. Or, if the participants aren't processing images, they can just ask questions of the people doing the processing.

JunoCam participant Matt Brealey told Space.com that he has been "attempting to use software from the Visual Effects industry" to process the images from JunoCam. (You can see examples of his work here and here, and you can read an article he wrote about his technique here).

"I've been fascinated by space imagery for as long as I can remember, so suddenly realizing that I could in some small way be a part of creating new images was extremely exciting," Brealey told Space.com via email. "That combined with the technical challenge of using tools from the VFX industry really [piqued] my interest in the project."

The skill level among the participants varies, according to Gerald Eichstädt, a software programmer who has been processing images from JunoCam with software he wrote especially for this project (which puts him at the upper end of the skill-level spectrum). He told Space.com that many people are using commercially available software, including some that's provided on the JunoCam website.

"JunoCam images provide challenges on almost any level; you can improve your skills according to your individual capabilities," he wrote. "To squeeze out as much as possible from the JunoCam images, you need more than (technical) skills; you also need to apply your skills, either by using existing software in an appropriate way, or by developing and applying appropriate software. But there are also many things you can do with consumer software. Good creative ideas are another important factor and may well be able to compensate [for] less technical skills."

Eichstädt said that he has been working with people who have skills that are different from his own (such as extensive knowledge about Jupiter's surface features), and he has been working with them to get more out of the images he makes. He said he has processed thousands of images and has posted most of them to his own website to avoid flooding the JunoCam website.

Participants can post their processed images to the mission website for others to see — Hansen said she definitely wants people to share the images, not just "post them to their private Facebook page." The goal of some of the processing is to analyze the different features that the instrument sees on the surface, while other images are processed with the aim of creating amazing aesthetic value. Some images accomplish both of those things.

"It's pretty cool that a lot of processed images are collected in one place and people can discuss them," Roman Tkachenko, a citizen scientist who is processing JunoCam images, told Space.com. Tkachenko's images focus on identifying swirling storms and other prominent features in the atmosphere. "Many amateur image processors face the problem of having no opportunity to show their work to the public, because their audience on social media is too small. This project partially solved that problem, at least regarding images taken by Juno spacecraft."

While the JunoCam instrument is not part of the probe's suite of science instruments, its first snapshots of Jupiter revealed never-before-seen features of the Jovian giant, including clusters of storms near the planet's north pole, and a cyclone stretching 52 miles (85 km) above the base surface level, according to Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator. Bolton discussed the early results during the same press briefing at the 2016 AAS DPS meeting.

"I've not the funding to do a space mission myself, so I can save a lot of time and money by joining an existing mission funded mostly by the U.S. taxpayers," Eichstädt wrote. "Processing JunoCam images is very challenging for most people, and I knew that I would be able to do it; so it's to some degree an honor and a duty to give the U.S. taxpayers something back."

A leap of faith

Besides image processing and the discussion board, the JunoCam project has two other key features. First, the JunoCam team is asking amateur astronomers to post telescopic images of Jupiter and other data that is gathered from Earth. Those uploads are then used to help Juno team members plan what JunoCam will image during upcoming flybys of Jupiter. Some of the images that have been processed are using that data already: Some of the user-submitted image show how the features that are seen in the JunoCam image correlate with the features that are seen in images of Jupitertaken by previous space or ground-based instruments.

"That allows us to connect what we're seeing from our different perspective to the historical record of the dynamics of Jupiter's atmosphere," Hansen said.

The final task that the JunoCam project will pose to the public is voting on which features will be imaged during future flybys. JunoCam can't take pictures continuously while Juno is making its close flyby of Jupiter, so the organizers have to be selective. Hansen said there will be a "partial vote" for what JunoCam should focus on during its next close approach on Dec. 11. Full voting will take place for the following close approach, scheduled to take place on Feb. 2.

"We took a real leap of faith with this experiment with the public — that people would actually think this is cool and participate," Hanse said. "And I'm really so pleased with the response that we've gotten. I really feel like our leap of faith was justified."

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

{ http://www.space.com/ }

Date of sighting: November 5, 1975
Location of sighting: Central Arizona, USA
Source: Coral Lorenzen, APRO

This is the anniversary of one of the most publicized and most amazing evidence backed sightings to date. I am amazed that Travis still lectures about it every year and he even has a book at his website that he will personally sign for you if you wish it. Click to to see Travis's UFO site.
Scott C. Waring

Report states:
On November 5, 1975, six young woodcutters, along with their employer, were working in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, engaged in a tree-thinning contract for the U. S. Forest Service. The forest is located in east central Arizona, and the work area is fifteen miles from Heber.

The story begins at approximately 6:10 P.M., when the men were heading home in a seven-man crew-cab truck. Traveling along a bull-dozed trail, one of the men sighted a gold-colored glow through the thickets. As they rounded a right-hand turn, they saw the source of the glow - a structural object hovering approximately fifteen feet above a clearing and a scant ninety feet or so from the viewers.

Travis Walton, twenty-two, was sitting on the right- hand passenger side of the front seat. When he saw the object, he called to Mike Rogers, the driver and boss of the crew, to stop. Hardly waiting for the truck to come to a complete halt, Walton jumped out and, at a fast walk, approached a woodpile (stacked by the thinners) to get a closer look. As his fellow employees called for him to be careful and come back, he stood and looked at the object, which was at a 60-degree elevation from his position. It had the shape of two "pie pans" or shallow bowls placed rim to rim. A "beeping" sound was heard by all.

Walton stepped back a couple of paces, intending to vacate the vicinity of the craft when his friends were startled to see a blue-green beam shoot out from the bottom of the craft, striking Walton in the upper area of his body, lifting him from the ground with his arms out stretched, and flinging him back to the ground.

Thinking he and the others were in danger, Rogers restarted the truck and left the area. A quarter of a mile away, he stopped and the six men looked back. They saw a light rise from the ground and streak into the north east, originating in the area where they had left Travis. Thinking it was the object, Rogers turned the truck around and drove back to the clearing.

For fifteen minutes the men searched for Walton, covering the near area and calling, but to no avail. Rogers then decided to drive to Heber, the nearest town, and report Walton's disappearance to the sheriff. On the way, they debated what they should tell, doubting that the truth would be believed, but, unable to come up with an acceptable explanation, they told what they had experienced.

On November 10, the six men were given polygraph tests which established that they had not harmed Walton (it had been implied that they had done away with Travis and hidden his remains, despite the fact that Rogers was his best friend of many years standing) and that they had, actually, seen a UFO.

On the night of November 10, at approximately midnight, a call came in to the Grant Neff residence (Mrs. Neff was Travis' sister and at the time the only Walton in Snowflake, Arizona, with a telephone). It was Travis, sounding confused and disoriented, saying he was at a phone booth in Heber and in terrible pain. Neff went to Mrs. Kellett's (Travis' mother) home, picked up Travis' brother Duane, who had come up from Phoenix when notified of his brother's disappearance, and drove at breakneck speed to Heber, where they found Travis slumped in a phone booth. He had a five-day growth of beard and appeared thin but was otherwise apparently all right.

Within hours, Duane drove Travis to his home in Phoenix, intent on keeping him away from the horde of reporters, which had plagued the Walton family during Travis' disappearance, and to obtain medical treatment.

For a short time, Duane Walton was frustrated by the representative of a local UFO group, who sent him to a pseudomedical hypnotist, but he was eventually contacted by the AERIAL PHENOMENA RESEARCH ORGANI ZATION (APRO), which called in a team of medical experts.

Ultimately, Walton was given the Minnesota Multi Phase Personality Inventory (MMPI), Rorschach (commonly called Inkblot) Polygraph and Psychological Stress Evaluator tests, all of which established that he had told the truth as he knew it. All of these tests were conducted and interpreted by experts.

Unfortunately, Walton only recalls an hour or two of his five-day absence. He claims to have awoke on a table in a room which he first assumed was a hospital. The ceiling seemed low, there was an oval-shaped metallic-colored apparatus on his chest (his denim jacket and shirt were pulled up), and he was in considerable pain. The "air" in the room seemed oppressive, i.e., warm and damp. It took a few minutes to get his wits about him, and when he became fully aware of his surroundings, he realized he was in no ordinary hospital. Around the "table" on which he reclined were three strange creatures-strange, because they were less than five feet tall, very pale, with large, domed heads, large eyes, small nose, mouth, and ears, and their bodies, encased in tannish orange, seamless jumpsuits, and were very thin.

Upon seeing them, Walton struggled to his feet, and when they approached him with their fingernail-less hands outstretched, he grabbed a rodlike object from an adjacent table and prepared to defend himself. After flailing about with the instrument for a moment or two, Walton was surprised to see the trio file out of the door and turn to the right.

After the creatures left, Walton also exited the room, turning left. Following a curved corridor, looking for a way out, he found a circular room with a chair (which was too small for him but nevertheless he sat in it) with a "screen" on each arm. He touched a lever and the "stars" on the "ceiling" above seemed to move, so he moved the lever back to its original position and decided against further experimentation.

Shortly, a "man," approximately six feet tall, with brown hair and strange golden-brown eyes, appeared at the door which Travis had entered. He beckoned to Travis, and Travis went to him, babbling question after question, none of which were answered. The "man" said nothing, took Travis by the arm, led him out into the corridor or hall, to the right, then stopped, whereupon a section of the wall opened. He had not touched anything. They walked into a small room, the door behind them closed, and seconds later a door opened in front of them. They then went down an incline (apparently out of the enclosure Walton had been in) where Walton found him self in a large enclosure resembling a quarter of a cylinder. There were three or four oval-shaped metallic objects parked there (the same apparent metallic substance as everything else he had seen). He was led by the "man" (who was clad in a blue "jumpsuit" with a clear "helmet") through the enclosure, to another door into a room where there were three other human-appearing individuals-two men and a woman. They resembled the first, except that, although they wore the same clothing, they were without helmets.

They gestured to him to get upon a table. He resisted, but they eventually succeeded in their efforts and Travis reclined; an apparatus resembling an oxygen mask with a black ball attached was placed over his face and he lost consciousness.

Travis awoke about midnight about a quarter mile west of Heber, Arizona. He was lying on his stomach and raised up to watch the curved, metallic hull of an aircraft taking off straight up, reflecting the yellow stripe of the dividing line of the highway below.

What did Travis Walton see? What did he experience? Tests indicate that he has related his experience truthfully. His book The Walton Experience (1978) will tend to illuminate the reader and enable him to make his own judgment.