TUNGSTEN VALLEY - Last month we tackled the Case of the Red-Light Desert UFO, where a pulsating red glow lit up the site of a then-secret California desert stealth-plane radar test range all night, terrorizing the range’s lone security person. The night had been pitch-black, cold, and foggy. The guard said a red orb “came from the south,” alternately approaching and speeding away. She added, “it came up and flashed in my face.”

The sheriff’s office, the FBI, and Northrop Aircraft people suspected Russians or extraterrestrials of surveilling the stealth operation with some sort of UFO. My Boulder colleague and I decided to investigate the mystery.

That day, we methodically scanned the horizon with tripod-mounted binoculars on a compass rose. We spotted a building rooftop, shimmering violently on the horizon at some large distance, on an azimuth of 195 degrees. That being basically “south,” we drew a vector on an aeronautical chart. It went through George AFB, 16.5 miles away.

We binocular-scanned again at nightfall, and were rewarded with a dimly pulsating red dot on that same 195 azimuth. It looked like an obstacle-avoidance light. Pulling out our radar-rotation timer (when you’re with the US government, you carry these things with you), we counted ten pulsations and divided by ten to find the interval to a precision of 1/10 second.

Then we drove down to George AFB. We told the front-gate sentry we were “here to fix the radar.” That got us right in. (When people hear, “We have to get the radar running,” they tend to give way. Try it with ICE sometime.)

Sure enough, up on top of a multi-story office building was a bright, pulsating red collision-avoidance light. Its interval matched our earlier number to 1/10 of a second. We developed a hypothesis about the UFO.

The next day, we telephoned the George AFB Meteorological Officer on Duty (MOOD) and asked him about weather conditions on the night of the UFO. “Radiosonde data showed an unusually strong inversion; it reversed at a couple thousand feet up,” he replied. We asked if he knew anything about the red beacon light. “Affirmative; I’m its manager. With the inversion and fog, we cranked it up to full power that night, to 10,000 watts from the usual 100 watts.” We thanked him and hung up.

 So much for the red-light UFO. The MOOD said cold air had been trapped beneath warmer air. Such inversions are ducts for light and radio waves. Radiation trapped in the lower layer travels long distances with great brightness. The beacon’s rays, normally beamed upward into the sky, were instead bounced near the ground. Plus, the light’s power had been boosted by a factor of a hundred. It all combined to make a startling impression on a scared person miles away in a darkened hut. Our sponsors were relieved when we called them with our news.

Thus does it go with every UFO. Recent New Jersey UFOs turned out to be aircraft lights at a local airport. A Navy video clip of “a mysterious white orb flashing past an F-18 cockpit at unearthly speed,” which I reviewed a while back, was a radiosonde weather balloon with its clearly-visible, dangling telemetry box. It was in fact barely moving; its apparent 600 mph speed was the airplane’s. The flight crew who videoed it apparently didn’t know what a radiosonde looks like. But it freaked them out because they nearly smacked into it.

June Fun Astro-Fact: Spacecraft as far out as the asteroid belt are typically solar-powered (although a few Mars landers have been nuclear). For Jupiter and beyond, the sun’s rays are so weak that nuclear power is usually necessary.

In June Skies:

Solar Max Ramp-Up: The sun’s 11-year sunspot cycle peaks in July; it’s climbing now. The next few months are your best opportunity to see sunspots. For safe viewing: https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/observing-the-sun/.

The sun begins the month in Taurus, entering Gemini on the summer solstice, June 21 when days and nights will be 15 and 9 hours long, respectively.

The moon’s dates are: First Quarter June 2; Full (Strawberry Moon) June 11; Third Quarter June 18; New June 25.

June Meteor Showers The Arietids (parent, either asteroid 1566 Icarus or comet 96P/Machholz) and Bootids (ba-OO-tids) (parent, comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke) peak on June 10 and 27 respectively.

Best Sky Viewing Nights (Minimal Moon): June 1-2 (now past) and 18-30.

Sunset (Mid-Month): Leo with Regulus is prominent, high in the southwest. Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) is overhead. Follow its arm, arcing to Arcturus and then on to Spica in the southeast. Castor and Pollux are low in the west.

Midnight (Mid-Month): Vega, Deneb and Altair form the Navigator’s Triangle in the east to northeast. Scorpius with red Antares is prominent in the south.

Sunrise (Mid-Month): The Great Square of Pegasus is in the east. Arcturus sets just as the sun rises.

Mercury, in Gemini, is in the west below Castor and Pollux at sunset.

Venus, in Aries, is the Morning Star, low in the east at sunrise.

Mars, in Leo, is low in the WSW at sunset, setting at midnight. 

Jupiter, in Taurus, is lost in the sun.

Saturn, in Aquarius, is in the southeast at sunrise. With binoculars, go slightly up and leftward for Neptune.

Notable Space Missions: The Japanese company ispace launches the Hakuto-R Mission-2 on June 6. It will put a robot lander on the moon at Mare Frigoris.

Frank Sanders, a spectrum scientist, takes astronomy-related inquiries at backyardastronomy1@gmail.com.