On July 19, 1952, Palomar Observatory was undertaking a photographic survey of the night sky. Part of the project was to take multiple images of the same region of sky, to help identify things such as asteroids. At around 8:52 that evening a photographic plate captured the light of three stars clustered together. At a magnitude of 15, they were reasonably bright in the image. At 9:45 pm the same region of sky was captured again, but this time the three stars were nowhere to be seen. In less than an hour they had completely vanished.

  • rebul@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    The janitor was spotted with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels during the interval between the photos.