Baker report, 1968 congressional hearings

[[181]]
film and motivated the photographic experiment conducted by the author during December, 1955. December, rather than
August, was chosen due to the lower latitude of Los Angeles relative to Great Falls and because of the unique (smogless)
visibility during the course of the experiment. The experiment was devised in order to obtain empirical information on the
effect of distance, lens focal length, iris stop, frame speed, etc., in the photographic images of various small bright sources
of reflected sunlight; some 118 combinations of these variables were examined. The experimental results appeared to
indicate that if the first few frames of the film show Sun reflections from airplanes, which are optimally oriented with
respect to the Sun (not the 171° heading), then the planes would have been on the order of one to three miles distant from
the camera. If, however, these first few frames represent images of the reflection from airplanes not quite optimally
oriented, then the planes could have been closer. In either event, their structure would also have been visible. The images
were found to be much brighter than those that any birds could produce.
The brightness of a constant luminosity source, as it recedes from view, gives rise to a photographic image whose diameter
varies somewhere between [the] inverse square root of the range to the inverse square of the range. (Ordinarily, however,
with the inverse square for images as bright as the Montana objects.) The effects, which account for this uncertainty in
image-size vs. range relationship, involve light scattering in the atmosphere, optical aberrations, flaring at the lens surfaces,
diffraction, turbidity in the film, reflections off the film backing (halation), and adjacency effects (chemical reactions
between over-exposed and underexposed areas on the film).
On the basis of Fig. 1, we find a decrease in angular diameter of the first object of about 62%, and the second about 61 %.
Under the 171° heading assumption, the initial distance is about 78% less than the final distance (at disappearance). Thus,
it would seem that the 171° heading hypothesis is also in agreement with the film images being the result of a constant
brightness light source receding from the camera. That is, the inverse square distance decreases some 61%. Because the
relationship of the developed image size to source range is not precise and because it is doubtful that we are dealing with
constant-luminosity isotropic radiators, the third confirmation «f the 171° heading must be regarded as considerably less
precise than the confirmations provided by Figs. 3a and 3b.
Conclusions
Because of the conflict between every hypothesized natural phenomenon and one or more details of the hard-data,
photographic evidence analyzed (in addition to the uncertainty of the soft data, reported accounts (or rumors) of jet
aircraft), no clear-cut conclusion as to a natural phenomenon can be made and the anomalistic images, having no real
detail, cannot be analyzed further. These unexplainable images, taken alone, do not provide data on mass, shape, size, or
linear speed and, indeed like the early single-camera meteor photographs or even like the early examples of attempts at
photography through a microscope, are merely unresolved blobs and simply indicate the presence of a phenomenon. In
these past, historical instances, supplementary data and equipment improvement were sought after in a systematic fashion
even though there was only conjecture as to the exact character of the phenomena. See reference [8].
A number of other films have been viewed by the author, which purport to be UFO's, and they all seem to exhibit the
common quality of poor image definition. This situation is not especially surprising since most of them have been taken
with amateur equipment or they were accidentally taken from a great distance by cinetheodolites that were not "tracking"
them. Like the Montana film, some of these films definitely cannot be explained on the basis of natural phenomena (others
can be "explained" if one stretches one's imagination).
References and Notes
1. A copy of the local half hourly surface weather observation for August 15, 1950, was obtained from the Great
Falls, Montana Municipal Airport Station of the Weather Bureau. It shows that the surface wind increased during
the forenoon to readings between 26 and 28 mph between 9 a.m. and noon, and that it reached 37 mph at 12:30.
The surface wind direction was constantly from the southwest from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. It was clear (visibility of
60 miles), the temperature was 77°F at 11:27, and the barometer was at about 30.0".
2. In November of 1955, an inquiry by phone was directed to Colonel Donald M. Hamilton, Commanding Officer of
Malmstrom Air Force Base. He advised us by letter dated November 7, 1955, that "as far as I can determine, there
were no jet aircraft based here at that time, so that if any were in the air, they would have been transients."
3. Baker, Robert M. L., Jr. & Makemson, M. W., An Introduction to Astrodynamics, Second Edition, (Academic
Press, New York, 1967), pp. 319 to 333.