Nibiru SOHO Images Debunked

By Phil Plait of www.badastronomy.com This article was written by Phil afew years ago now but is still relevant to the newest wave of "Nibiru SOHO" images to hit the web. These images show exactly what Phil describes below.



What is going on in the SOHO images?

A few people have been asking about this, but there hasn't been much talk about it. As it happens, I have a lot of experience with astronomical imaging. I spent about a decade working on Hubble images, and a few years before that on a ground-based telescope. I still do dabble in digital astronomical imaging. I am not bragging, just putting my credentials down to show that I am very experienced in this field.

Let me say this up front: the images from SOHO are completely within the realm of what you'd expect from such images. The "anomalies" pointed out by Tuatha (who claims spaceships are all around the Sun: do a websearch on the words "suncruiser" and "SOHO" and you'll see what I mean), Ms. Lieder and the rest are not anomalies at all. They are simply things that happen when you use a digital camera.

The cameras usually used in astronomical imaging are called CCDs, for Charge-Coupled Device. It's like a computer chip that's sensitive to light. The best analogy for one is like an array of buckets in the rain. Each bucket (CCD pixel) collects rain (light). The amount of rain collected depends on how much rain falls on that bucket; the amount of light in each pixel of the CCD depends on how bright an object is. When light hits a CCD it is converted to electrons, and when the image is done the electrons are "read off" the CCD and counted. The more electrons you see in a pixel, the more light hit that pixel. The numbers of electrons can be converted to images by your computer. That's how the images on, say, the SOHO site are done.

So, how does this affect the Planet X arguments? In many ways:

Sometimes, a pixel is more sensitive to light than others. This can happen when a pixel is hit by high energy radiation like cosmic rays (which I'll abbreviate "CR"), which are subatomic particles zipping around space. What happens then is that pixel is always "bright", or "hot", even when nothing is putting light into it. You have to make a map of the hot pixels in a CCD so you can compensate for them.

Ms. Lieder claims the images taken by Steve Havas show Planet X. What they really show is a hot pixel. When the pictures are properly calibrated, as several people have shown (see here and here), the "Planet X" pixel goes away. One giveaway is that stars/planets/etc. are round in the image (they cover several pixels), where hot pixels look like single points. The things pointed out by Ms. Lieder and others are single points, so they cannot be real. This shows two things: 1) you have to be careful and understand CCDs when you look at the data, and 2) Ms. Lieder is wrong.

A lot of the stuff pointed out by Tuatha in the SOHO images is really just hot pixels. They aren't spaceships at all, they are simply pixels inside the SOHO camera that are a bit too overenthusiastic.

When cosmic rays hit a CCD, they dump their energy into a pixel, making it look very bright. Sometime, if the impact angle is low, the CR leaves a streak. At the end of the streak, it can suddenly dump lots of energy into the pixels, making what looks like a spray. I saw this all the time in my Hubble images. Unless there are billions of spaceships out there leaving little trails in all those random images, I would prefer to assume they are actually the somewhat more common cosmic ray.

In the SOHO images, there are lots of CRs. Sometimes these are particles from the Sun, accelerated during a coronal mass ejection. Matter of fact, after you see a big ejection from the Sun, the particles can hit the SOHO detectors, making it look like they were hit by a shotgun. A few of what Tuatha claims are spaceships near the Sun are CR sprays. Tuatha's claims are wrong.

Remember the bucket analogy? What happens when a bucket fills up to the brim with water? It overflows. The same thing happens in CCDs. A pixel can only hold so many electrons before it overflows. Because of the way the pixels are made, the overflow goes into the adjoining pixels horizontally, so the overflowing pixel leaks electrons into the pixels to its left and right (or above and below it). If enough light is hitting the one pixel, it can overflow the adjacent pixels, which flow into the next ones, and so on. When you look at the resulting image, a bright object appears to have a bright horizontal line going through it. This is called "blooming". A bright star may bloom over several vertical pixels, so you get many rows of blooming.



There is a picture posted at http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/indexback46.html which is called the "Ra" image because there is a feature that looks like the symbol for the Egyptian god Ra. This is a perfect example of a bright object blooming. If you go through the SOHO archive, you'll see this happening whenever a bright object is in the image. Venus is the brightest thing you'll see, and it blooms quite a bit. I don't know what was in the SOHO field in the Ra image, but it was bright and it bloomed (it may have been a very energetic CR). Those "wings" are not real. They are simply electrons that overflowed inside the CCD itself.

You can see several examples on this page: http://www.iwonderproductions.com/suncru.htm. In fact, the explanation given by Joe Gurman on that page is correct, and the webpage author didn't believe him. The cosmic rays and bright objects give the same shape every time because what's happening is inside the CCD, not on the sky. Also, the "torpedo" in that image is a comet! Lots of comets are seen going very near (and sometimes actually impacting) the Sun. Matter of fact, more comets have been discovered using SOHO than any other single telescope. Hundreds have been seen.

As far as other "anomalies" in SOHO images go, there are many, but all the ones I have seen have rational explanations. Sometimes you see what look like palm fronds coming out, fanning across the image (this one is a favorite of The Millennium Group, which you can see here). I asked a SOHO person, and they said that sometimes debris gets knocked off the satellite (there are a few moving parts on the satellite that can jolt it) and this stuff drifts in front of the camera. They are out of focus at first, and as they move away they get more and more in focus. That's why you get the palm frond shape; the thick base is actually when the particle is close, and the narrow tip is when it's far away. It's a time exposure of something coming into focus.

Conclusion

Well, that was longer than I anticipated, but I hope it clears some things up. The point here is that people like Tuatha, Ms. Lieder and others have no experience with digital astronomical cameras, and assume they simply take pictures. CCDs are far more complicated than that, and in fact I have just scratched the surface here with what you need to know to interpret CCD images. Every single thing Tuatha has pointed at in the SOHO images actually has a far more mundane explanation than alien spaceships.

Like Robert Sepehr (a man who has a Planet X video to sell, and constantly makes easily-disproven claims on a PX discussion group), who constantly claims the Sun is acting up without understanding that this is actually the Sun's normal and expected behavior, Tuatha and the others simply don't understand the subject they are talking about. It's really that simple. I don't mean this to sound condescending; I mean it to be literally true. I try to stay away from topics (like geology and mammoths) in this field when I do not have the expertise to give an informed opinion, but in this case I do. If more people actually went out and tried to find the answers to some of these questions, a lot of the Planet X "evidence" would go away.

W4 Media "What's Wrong With the World" Live Broadcast Promo ad (coming 2009)

A video and message below from a very good friend of ours. Check it out.



With the recent “restructuring” of the AZ UFO Show (which I was dismissed from for “Doing Nothing” (Which we all know is B.S.) and Rich’s belief that he’s now a psychic, and thus gives psychic readings on the show - I’m starting a new show to carry on the tradition of seeking the truth, not just in the realm of the paranormal, but in every area of life which we encounter daily…

Show will begin in 2009… I do not have an official start date, as we are still testing various different broadcast sites, to provide the best quality audio and video on the internet. If you know of a site that has these features, please let me know, maybe it can speed up the testing process…

If you wish to be informed when the show will begin, please send me either:

A message here on YouTube (TheScrutinizerReport), or email me at briandbunker@yahoo.com

I will NOT give out your email address to any other parties, and it will be used solely for giving updates on the upcoming show.

Giant Skeleton Hoax

Summary:
Emails with attached images supposedly depicting the skeletal remains of gigantic humans claim that the skeletons were unearthed in the Arabian or Indian deserts (Full commentary below.)

Status: False

Example 1: (Submitted, July 2004)

FYI. Just got this Email, only God knows better about this story, but check it out:

Recent gas exploration activity in the south east region of the Arabian desert uncovered a skeletal remains of a human of phenomenal size. This region of the Arabian desert is called the Empty Quarter, or in Arabic, 'Rab-Ul-Khalee'. The discovery was made by the Aramco Exploration team. As God states in the Quran that He had created people of phenomenal size the like of which He has not created since. These were the people of Aad where Prophet Hud was sent. They were very tall, big, and very powerful, such that they could put their arms around a tree trunk and uproot it. Later these people, who were given all the power, turned against God and the Prophet and transgressed beyond all boundaries set by God. As a result they were destroyed.

Ulema's of Saudi Arabia believe these to be the remains of the people of Aad. Saudi Military has secured the whole area and no one is allowed to enter except the ARAMCO personnel. It has been kept in secrecy, but a military helicopter took some pictures from the air and one of the pictures leaked out into the internet in Saudi Arabia. See the attachment and note the size of the two men standing in the picture in comparison to the size of the skeleton !!

Example 2: (Submitted, July 2007)

Subject: FW: Legendary skeleton

Recent exploration activity in the northern region of India uncovered a skeletal remains of a human of phenomenal size. This region of the Indian desert is called the Empty Quarter.

The exploration team also found tablets with inscriptions that stated that our Gods of Indian mythologicalyore, Brahma, had created people of phenomenal size the like of which He has not created since. They were very tall, big, and very powerful, such that they could put their arms around a tree trunk and uproot it. They were created to bring order among us since we were always fighting with each other. One of he sons of Bhima of the Pandava brothers is also thought of to have been carrying these genes. Later these people, who were given all the power turned against all our Gods and transgressed beyond all boundaries set. As a result they were destroyed by God Shiva.

The Geo Exploration team believes these to be the remains of those people.

Govt of India has secured the whole area and no one is, allowed to enter except the NatGeo personnel.



Commentary:
This classic leg-pull has now been circulating via email, blogs and forums for several years and has even been published by some news outlets as factual. In fact, the "giant skeleton" images that travel with these messages are not photographs depicting real discoveries but instead clever manipulations. A lot of recipients would be quick to doubt the authenticity of the images. However, submissions indicate that the high quality of the fake images coupled with the vaguely plausible explanations that accompany them are apparently enough to convince many recipients that the "discoveries" are genuine.

So far, there have been two popular variants of the hoax. The first variant (Example 1 above) claims that a skeleton of a gigantic human was discovered during a gas exploration in the south east region of the Arabian desert and sports an attached photograph to "prove" the claim. However, the cleverly created image of the giant skeleton is actually an entry in an image manipulation contest by artist "IronKite" in which participants were instructed to create "a picture of an archaeological discovery that looks so real, had it not appeared at Worth1000, people might have done a double take".

The message tries to add legitimacy to its fanciful tale by referencing the Quran's Prophet Hud and the people of Aad (or "Ad"). Some Islamic references do claim that the people of Aad were thought to be giants. However, other material describes them as having a "stature tall among the nations" or as simply being "physically well-built". The Christian Bible also makes mention of giants.

The second variant (Example 2 above) moves the "action" to the Indian desert and replaces the Islamic references with mentions of characters in Indian mythology, including Brahma and Bhima's son. According to Indian legend, Bhima's son Ghatotkacha was a powerful fighter with magical abilities, although he is not generally described as a giant. Other than the change in mythological references, much of the wording in the two hoax variants is virtually identical.

The Indian based variant includes IronKite's image along with three other giant skeleton pictures that also originate from the same Worth1000 contest. The second picture in the set, complete with giant revolver, is titled everlasting rest and was created by amaranto. The third image is an entry simply named Giant Skeleton and was created by Anakinnnn. And the fourth image in the set is named Uncovered Giant and was created by Trit.

The hoax was apparently republished by several media outlets in Indian, Bangladesh and elsewhere. A scan of one of these newspaper articles is included in one version of the hoax email. Such articles have given the hoax undeserved credibility.

IronKite's creation has even been featured in a YouTube video entitled "Proof evolution is an evil lie from satan (the devil)". The video's creator uses IronKite's giant skeleton, along with other dubious images, as "proof" that giants once lived on Earth. The inclusion of a well-documented hoax image, in addition to a number of logical flaws, seriously undermines the video maker's credibility and has earned him the ridicule of his fellow YouTubers.

The image and "Arabian desert discovery" description is also included in another fanciful YouTube video warning of impending disaster for Earth. Again, the blatant use of a well-known hoax as "proof" decimates what little credibility the video had to begin with.

Even if you do believe that a race of giants once walked the Earth, you can rest assured that these photographs do not depict some of their remains. In their original context as part of a Worth1000 contest, the status of the images as purely fictional "archaeological discoveries" is quite clear. Apparently, however, some unknown prankster stole IronKite's image from its original setting, added some seemingly relevant text, and sent it on its way. Perhaps due largely to the talent of its creator, the image has circulated ever since. In due course, others have apparently added more Worth1000 images to the hoax messages.

The photo was created by altering an actual photo of a Cornell University excavation of a mastodon skeleton outside Hyde Park, New York, where the Paleontological Research Institution and the Cornell Department of Geological Sciences are excavating the skeleton of a mastodon. Real photos below.




IronKite digitally superimposed a human skeleton over the mastodon-dig photo, he told National Geographic News in December 2007. IronKite started with an aerial photo of a mastodon excavation in Hyde Park, New York, in 2000. He then digitally superimposed a human skeleton over the beast's remains. The later addition of a digging man presented the biggest technical challenge. "If you look, he's holding a yellow-handled shovel, but there's nothing on the end," IronKite said. "Originally, the spade end was there. But [it] looked like it was occupying the exact same space as the skeleton's temple, making the whole thing look fake. "Now it looks like he's just holding a stick, and people don't notice. It's funny." IronKite also altered the color of the man's clothing to create a "uniform tie-in" with the white-shirted observer peering down from the wooden platform. The two figures work to exaggerate the scale of the skeleton, he added. If you also look in the bottom right corner of the original mastodon-dig photo, you can see a tusk of the animal that IronKite left in his altered ones. IronKite said he's tickled that the picture—which took only about an hour and a half to create—has generated so much Internet attention. "I laugh myself silly when some guy claims to know someone who was there, or even goes so far as to claim that he or she was there when they found the skeleton and took the picture," IronKite said. "Sometimes people seem so desperate to believe in something that they lie to themselves, or exaggerate in order to make their own argument stronger."

Zecharia Sitchin and The Earth Chronicles

". . .he's just another nut making a living selling books that treat folks to a tale they want to believe in."
---Rob Hafernik

"...the Sumerian Epic of Creation is not an allegorical myth but a sophisticated cosmogony scientifically describing how our solar system came to be...." Zecharia Sitchin

Zecharia Sitchin, along with Erich von Däniken and Immanuel Velikovsky, make up the holy trinity of pseudohistorians. Each begins with the assumption that ancient myths are not myths but historical and scientific texts. Sitchin's claim to fame is announcing that he alone correctly reads ancient Sumerian clay tablets. [Of course, he didn't announce this by taking out an ad in the New York Times but by implying it with his "translations" that do not jibe with the work of legitimate scholars in the field.] If Sitchin is right, then all other scholars have misread these tablets, which, according to Sitchin, reveal that gods from another planet (Nibiru or Niburu, which orbits our Sun every 3,600 years) arrived on Earth some 450,000 years ago and created humans by genetic engineering of female apes. Niburu orbits beyond Pluto and is heated from within by radioactive decay, according to Sitchin. No other scientist has discovered that these descendants of gods blew themselves up with nuclear weapons some 4,000 years ago (The War of Gods and Men, p. 310).* Sitchin alone can look at a Sumerian tablet and see that it depicts a man being subjected to radiation. He alone knows how to correctly translate ancient terms allowing him to discover such things as that the ancients made rockets (ibid., p. 46).* Yet, he doesn't seem to know that the seasons are caused by the earth's tilt, not by its distance from the sun.

Sitchin was born in Russia, was raised in Palestine, and graduated from the University of London with a degree in economic history. He worked for years as a journalist and editor in Israel before settling in New York.

Sitchin, like Velikovsky, presents himself as erudite and scholarly in a number of books, including The Twelfth Planet (1976) and The Cosmic Code (1998). Both Sitchin and Velikovsky write very knowledgeably of ancient myths and both are nearly scientifically illiterate. Like von Däniken and Velikovsky, Sitchin weaves a compelling and entertaining story out of facts, misrepresentations, fictions, speculations, misquotes, and mistranslations. Each begins with their beliefs about ancient visitors from other worlds and then proceeds to fit facts and fictions to their basic hypotheses. Each is a master at ignoring inconvenient facts, making mysteries where there were none before, and offering their alien hypotheses to solve the mysteries. Their works are very attractive to those who love a good mystery and are ignorant of the nature and limits of scientific knowledge. They are especially attractive to those who are ignorant of biblical and historical scholarship.

Sitchin promotes himself as a Biblical scholar and master of ancient languages, but his real mastery was in making up his own translations of Biblical texts to support his readings of Sumerian and Akkadian writings.

He's let us know he's going to twist the translations around to support his thesis. Indeed, a reader of Sitchin's book would do well to keep a couple of Bibles handy to check up on the verses Sitchin quotes. Many of them will sound odd or unrecognizable because they have been translated from their familiar form (this is made harder by the fact that Sitchin rarely tells you just which verse he is quoting). This would be much more acceptable if he wasn't using the twisted translations to support the thesis that led to the twisted translations (Hafernik).

Most of Sitchin’s sources are obsolete. He has received nothing but ridicule from scientific archaeologists and scholars familiar with ancient languages. His most charming quality seems to be his vivid imagination and complete disregard for established facts and methods of inquiry, traits that are apparently very attractive to some people.

Sitchin's ideas have been appropriated by Raël, another wise man, who has started his own religion (Raëlian Religion) around the idea that humans are the result of a DNA experiment by ancient visitors from outer space. Raël has even written a channeled book, dictated to him by extraterrestrials. It is called The Final Message. We can only hope it is.

Link to original post: Zecharia Sitchin and The Earth Chronicles

YouTube user NoStarPanel Exposed!

This is one of many conspiracy YouTuber's who help peddle the Nibiru hoax. NoStarPanel, who is in cahoots with none other than Marshall Masters of YOWUSA.com (say nomore!) posts videos of blacked out areas of Google Sky, pretty much stating there is a global conspiracy to block Nibiru from view on these programs. Well, first of all his claims are absolute rubbish. First we had Nibiru only being viewable from the South Pole, which is why the South Pole Telescope was put there! Again complete tripe which was cooked up by Marshall Masters yet again. Nothing is "only visible" from the South Pole or that restrictive a position. The South Pole doesn't have it's "own little Hemisphere". If Nibiru was viewable from this location, then it would also be viewable to the entire Southern Hemisphere as well. Not to mention that Nibiru is meant to be a huge Brown Dwarf Star, with it's expected arrival sometime towards the end 2012, it would be one of, if not the brightest objects in the night sky. Not to mention that this type of body would already be wrecking havoc on the Solar System being less than 4 years away! Now back to the blacked out areas on Goggle Sky, which YouTuber NoStarPanel believes is hiding Nibiru. Well firstly this dimwit found a blacked out area in the Orion Constellation, see video here, one of the largest and perhaps the best-known and most conspicuous in the sky. Its brilliant stars are found on the celestial equator and are visible throughout the world. Its three prominent "belt" stars - three stars of medium brightness in the mid-section of this constellation - make this constellation easy to spot and globally recognized. From mid-northern latitudes, Orion is visible in the evening from October to early January and in the morning from late July to November. So this pretty much obliterates the "Nibiru can only be seen from the South Pole" argument once again. NoStarPanel has moved on from there, and has now found another blacked out area in Virgo, see video here. You can see an image of the blacked out area below.

Wow, that's quite a leap there NoStarPanel! Virgo can be seen in spring and summer in the Northern Hemisphere and in autumn and winter in the southern hemisphere.Does this apply to Nibiru too!? Well sadly for NoStarPanel, this so called anomaly has already been debunked by another YouTube user. Video below.



What passes through this region of the sky during October and why it was blacked out from the IR mapping? Answer, the Sun!


The IR was not blocked in my SKY CHARTING program, nor is it blocked in MS Telescope any more either. It has moved, it's currently further down west from it's original location. Why? Because that's were the Sun is currently located in Virgo and blacked out from current IR Sky mapping. Logic.. if only everyone had equal amounts...

Oh and just to add, this comment from NoStarPanel himself just shows he doesn't have a clue what he's looking at or talking about.

That's one thing you got right NoStarPanel, you are not an astronomer, but many people are and they know what they're talking about. I guess they just can't be bothered to go out with a telescope and look for themselves and have to rely on freely, and quite frankly poor internet applications to look for something that isn't there. As conspiracies go, this one is exceedingly weak. We'll be running more articles on this NoStarPanel character, his connection with Marshall Masters of YOWUSA.com aswell as his connection between another YouTube user by the name of StevenWoodCERN. How this user also filters comments he doesn't like and how he and Marshall Masters file false copyright notices against people who go against their claims, resulting in them getting their YouTube accounts suspended.