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This is a New Zealand Defence Force public release of RNZAF file AIR 39/3/3, "Flying Saucers," which covers 1952 to 1955 and was declassified in September 2010 under the Official Information Act. It collects sighting reports from the public and military personnel, press clippings, and a table of 1952 sightings. It also holds Carter Observatory opinions attributing some reports to meteors. A large part covers the inquiry into lights seen from National Airways Corporation Flight 108 on 31 October 1955, which the RNZAF could not fully explain as Venus.
“Open Minds”13 pages
## Calculated Data for Venus.
Mouth of Mokau River: Lat. 38°42'8
Long. 174°39'8
Venus: Declination 20°07' 8
L.N.A. 101° 37' .5 W at 0800 G.M.T.
105° 22' .3 W at 0815 G.M.T.
Time Zone: 12 hours E of Greenwich
N.Z. Time p.m. Altitude of Venue True Bearing
08 00 3°51'.8 247°11'.7
08 15 111.2 24458.6
The altitude is true, uncorrected for refraction or dip.
## REMAK8:
1. From the above data, Venus would set for an observer at sea level, at 8.25 p.m. assuming a refraction of $ 3 4^{\prime} $ . Abnormalities of refraction together with the height of eye could make this a few minutes later, agreeing very well in general with the observation.
2. The general direction given by the observer agrees so closely with the calculated bearing as to leave little doubt.
3. The diurnal motion would give the exact effects noted by the observer, viz., dropping to the horizon and moving to the south.
4. The colour and colour changes are in accordance with what is to be expected with a setting object. As an example there is the redness of the Sun when on the horizon. This is due to the absorption of shorter wavelengths of light by the horizon.atmosphere
5. The ciroling movement noted at the beginning of the second paragraph could be due to a not uncommon phenomenon of refraction effects causing stars to appear to move irregularly in the sky, together with the fact that the observer could not be fully assured of a steady line of sight without instruments.
## CONCLUSION:
All the evidence points very definitely to an observation of the setting of the planet Venus. Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 445 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.