Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

177
The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences Vol. XV, No. 1, pp. 31-36 Jan.—Feb., 1968
Observational Evidence of
Anomalistic Phenomena'
Robert M. L. Baker, Jr.3
Abstract
A summary of the data obtained from a series of analyses
and experiments, which were initially carried out by the au-
thor under the auspices of Douglas Aircraft Company and
based upon movie film containing anomalistic data, originally
provided by the United States Air Force, is presented. It
is concluded that, on the basis of the photographic evidence,
the images cannot be explained by any presently known
natural phenomena. On the other hand, the quality of the
images is insufficient to determine the nature of the anomalis-
tic phenomena recorded on the movie film.
Introduction
Two anomalistic unidentified flying objects (UFO's)
were sighted and later photographed at about 1130
a.m. Mountain Standard Time on August .15, 1950,
by Nicholas Mariana at Great Falls, Montana. Mr.
Mariana owned and operated a radio station in Mis-
soula, Montana, and was the owner of the Great Falls
baseball team.
• All of the soft-data (eye witness reports of )Lr.
Mariana and his secretary) indicated that the objects
were silvery in appearance with a notch or band at
one point on their periphery and could be seen to ro-
tate in unison, hover, and then "...with a swishing
sound, floated away to the left (SW) ...." The hard
data from the film showed inarticulate bright white
dots. Figure 1 shows the manner in which the diameter
of the bright dots decreased with time. The objects
passed behind a water tower and are exhibited in Fig.
2, along with the associated frame number (the frames
below 65 exhibited no foreground). According to lari-
ana, 35 of the earlier frames, allegedly lost by the Air
Force, showed a larger image, complete with a "ro-
tating notch." Figure 2 was constructed from iconolog
measurements (a film viewer with moveable cross hairs
and a digitalized coordinate output) using the ftire-
Manuscript submitted November, 1967. Paper was pre-
sented at an AAS Seminar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena. A manuscript on the same subject matter was
originally submitted in 1962. The complete revision of this
earlier manuscript, after receiving three favorable reviews,
was accepted.
The Senior Scientist of System Sciences 'Corporation, a
subdivision of Computer Sciences Corporation, 650 N. Sepul-
veda Blvd., El Segundo, Calif. 90245, and the Department
of Engineering, UCLA.
ground reference points marked C), C), ancl C). This
figure is drawn like a panorama on the assumption that
the photographer kept his stance without moving ap-
preciably (which was reported by him and was well
borne out by the consistence of his perspective). These
initial measurements were made by the author at
Douglas Aircraft Company in 1955-1956.
Analysis
The "Montana" film contains six independent data
(as functions of time) on about 225 frames (frames 65
to 290), which describe the UFO images, i.e., the two
degrees of freedom of each dot (as depicted on two-
dimensional film after the foreground appears on frame
65) and the apparent diameter of the developed image
of each on all 290 frames (no ellipticity could be seen
in the images except for occasional image smear due
to uneven panning). In the analysis it was convenient
to treat the UFO's as a system. The four degrees of
freedom chosen for this system were the azimuth and
altitude of the midpoint on the line of centers between
the images, their angular separation and their inclina-
tion to the horizon. The inclination to the horizon was
found to be very small, the objects appearing to move
almost in a plane parallel to the ground. There is a
slight decrease in the angle of inclination as the objects
regress, but its small value is almost masked by random
errors inherent in the measurements. Figure 3a presents
a plot of the angular altitude, /t, and the azimuth, A,
of the midpoint of the line of centers after frame 6.5
(i.e., after a measureable foreground appears), and
Fig. 3b presents the separation distance ratio WO
as a function of time, where 00 is the initial angular
separation (frame 1) and 8 is the angular separation
at any given time. In both of these plots some frames
were not measured, e.g., due to obscuration of the
images during water-tower passage, or were missing
(there were frames missing between frame numbers
177 to 180 on the 35 mm print that was measured for
separation distance, but these were accounted for in
the time scale using the 16 mm original as a basis).
About 225 frames after the foreground (ventilator duct)
appears on the film (i.e., after the 290th frame), the
objects can no longer be clearly identified and measure-
ments become very uncertain.