It was written about by John Keel and was supposedly discovered in 1960.
Called the Black Knight satellite.
It was a strange unexplained satellite.
Here is a link on it.

http://www.phildickiangnosticism.com/blackknight.html

Any thoughts?

Thanks Drifter but the first link doen't work mate....

I do not know what the problem was with that link. I typed it in correctly.
I deleted it.

I wonder if that strange satellite is still there and can be tracked?

Here it mentions a signal that was picked up in 1928


http://unexplained.wordpress.com/2007/07/2...ght-from-space/


Got this from somewhere else

'The Space Probe Affair'.

The late John Macvey drew our attention to Prof. Ron Bracewell's suggestion that a probe from another civilisation had tried to contact Earth in the 1920's. I produced a 'translation' of the 1920's signals, suggesting that the probe had come from the star Epsilon Bootis, about 13,000 years ago. The paper was published by the British Interplanetary Society and caused a considerable stir in the early 1970's: a more popular version was published in Analog, a more detailed one in "Man and the Stars", and later papers appeared in the Journal of the Society of Electronic and Radio Technicians, and as a guest chapter in "Extraterrestrial Encounter". Out of ASTRA's share of the "Man and the Stars' proceeds a satellite tracking station was built to search for the probe, but a series of major setbacks, including vandalism and hurricane damage, prevented us from commissioning it. In the end most of the 'Epsilon Bootis' translation had to be discarded, but recently it's beginning to seem that there may be something to it after all. A further article 'Epsilon Bootis revisited' appeared in the March 1998 issue of Analog.

First the satellite circles the Polar orbit, then it says people on Long Island started seeing it.

What, did it move out of Polar orbit to Long Island by itself???? :confused:

Unfortunately there is a paucity of verifiable facts in the presentation. Was it discovered in 1927, 1928, 1957 or 1960? Buzzzz's link mentions that it was found to be "shadowing" Sputnik 1, although the meaning of this term, if it was not obscure enough already, is further obscured by its mentioning that it was found to be in a polar orbit, "something that neither the Americans or Soviets were capable of at the time." (The last statement is verifiably true.)

It mentions a name, Duncan Lunan, as being the originator of the claim that it transmitted a star map pointing to Epsilon Boötes. A link points to some of his writing, wherein he describes (without mentioning the words Black Knight) his earlier writings on this subject. He mentions a journal with which I am familiar: the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. I have access to a range of academic journals, but I have no subscription to this journal and I cannot gain access to a issues of more than than thirty years ago. Some journals have digitized versions of their archives which I can browse easily, but I have no access to this one. Nor do I have access to Analog or the Journal of the Society of Electronic and Radio Technicians.

Remember your mechanics: the plane of all orbits intersects the center of mass of the body which they orbit. The corollary to this is that a polar orbit crosses all latitudes.

The black knight satellite. I'm not really sure what to make of this story. I've only seen the most sporadic mention of this thing on the occasional website. But man, as a long time fan of Philip K. Dick, the first time I heard about it my eyes sure went wide. Regardless of the truth of the situation, it's one hell of a tale.

The most cited report of the satellite comes from Disneyland of the Gods, by John Keel. He reports that in February 1960 the US detected an unknown object in polar orbit, a feat that neither they or the USSR had been able to accomplish. As if that wasn't enough, it apparently was several sizes larger than anything either country would have been able to get off the ground.

And then, the oddness began. HAM operators began to receive strange coded messages. One person in particular said he managed to decode one of the transmissions, and it corresponded to a star chart. A star chart which would have been plotted from earth 13,000 years ago, and focused on the Epsilon Bostes star system.

On September 3, 1960, seven months after the satellite was first detected by radar, a tracking camera at Grumman Aircraft Corporation's Long Island factory took a photograph of it. People on the ground had been occasionally seeing it for about two weeks at that point. Viewers would make it out as a red glowing object moving in an east-to-west orbit. Most satellites of the time, according to what little material I've been able to find on the black knight satellite, moved from west-to-east. It's speed was also about three times normal. A committee was formed to examine it, but nothing more was ever made public.

Three years later, Gordon Cooper was launched into space for a 22 orbit mission. On his final orbit, he reported seeing a glowing green shape ahead of his capsule, and heading in his direction. It's said that the Muchea tracking station, in Australia, which Cooper reported this too was also able to pick it up on radar traveling in an east-to-west orbit. This event was reported by NBC, but reporters were forbidden to ask Cooper about the event on his landing. The official explanation is that an electrical malfunction in the capsule had caused high levels of carbon dioxide, which induced hallucinations.

Creepy, cool, story to be sure. There's two things in particular which are of particular note to Philip K. Dick. The most obvious is the idea of a satellite orbiting the earth and sending coded communications to it. One of the theories Dick had for his experiences was that they had been triggered, or enhanced, by an extremely ancient and alien satellite. The initial 2-3-74 experience also began with a very similar color to the first sighting of the black knight, a reddish pinkish light beamed directly at him.

Phil also mentioned in his exegesis that he considered ten of his novels to be of particular importance, with the novel valis as the cipher to unlock their meaning. These ten books, the "meta novel", are Eye in the Sky, Time Out of Joint, The Man in the High Castle, The Game Players of Titan, Martian Time Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, UBIK, A Maze of Death and of course VALIS. I think it's fair to include Radio Free Albemuth in there as well, which was written after his meta novel statement, and which is in many ways a retelling of VALIS. What's interesting here is that he wrote the first, Eye in the Sky, so soon before the black knight sighting. About three or four years before it was detected by radar. Well, if in fact it was ever there to be detected.





Relevant quotes from valis:

"The satellite," Fat said. "VALIS. Vast Active Living Intel-ligence System. It fires information down to them?"
"It does more than that," Kevin said. "Under certain circumstances it controls them. It can override them when it wants to."
"And they're trying to shoot it down?" I said. "With that missile?"
Kevin said, "The early Christians-the real ones-can make you do anything they want you to do. And see-or not see -anything. That's what I get out of the picture."
"But they're dead," I said. "The picture was set in the present."
"They're dead," Kevin said, "if you believe time is real. Didn't you see the time dysfunctions?"

Relevant quotes from Radio Free Albemuth:

Since my contact came in most strangely between 3:00 and 4:00 A.M., I realized that probably a booster satellite, of alien origin, orbited Earth, a slave communications satellite that had been sent here thousands of years ago.
'What are you doing sitting out on the patio?' Rachel asked me.
'Listening,' I said.
'To what?'
To the voices of the stars,' I said, although more accurately I meant the voices from the stars. But it was as if the stars themselves spoke, as I sat there in the chilly dark, alone except for my cat, who was out there out of custom anyhow; each night Pinky sat on the railing of the patio, communing as I was but over a longer period of time, over his entire adult life. Seeing him now I understood that he was picking up information in the night, from the night, from the pattern of blinks that came by starlight. He was hooked up with the universe as he sat here now, like myself, gazing upward silently.

The new personality in me had not awakened from a sleep of two millennia; it had, more accurately speaking, been printed out by the alien satellite, impressed on me afresh from outside. It was an addition, not a substitution in place of me but a kind of package identity based on the total knowledge of the satellite. It was to raise me to the highest level possible in my ability to cope. The satellite, itself linked to higher life forms, was concerned with my capacity to live; it or they, the totality of them, had seen me faltering under the oppression, and their response was reflexive. It amounted to a rational attempt to give aid to whoever was in touch with them, who was capable of assimilating their printout. I had been selected for that reason alone. Their concern was universal. They would have assisted anyone they could reach.One odd point that Moyashka had noted which he could not account for was the fact that the radio signals came only when the source was above Earth's dark or night side; during the day the signals ceased. Moyashka conjectured that the so-called Heaviside layer might be involved.
The signals, although short in duration, seemed 'highly information rich' because of their sophistication and complexity. Curiously, the frequency changed periodically, a phenomenon found in transmissions seeking to avoid jamming, Moyashka stated. Further, his team had discovered, entirely by accident, that animals in their Pul-kovo laboratory underwent slight but regular physical changes during the time of signal transmission. Their blood volume altered and their blood pressure readings increased. Provisionally, Moyashka conjectured that radiation accompanying the radio signals might account for it.
[Ed. Note here the, perhaps slight, similarity in the name of the fictional scientist who discovered the satellite, Moyashka, and the Australian Muchea tracking station which picked up Cooper's sighting.]

If the Russians did photograph the ETI satellite, the invader, they would find it old and pitted. I had been there thousands of years.

The satellite had passed from our world and, with it, the healing rays, like those of an invisible sun, felt by creatures but unseen and unacknowledged. The sun with healing in its wings.

Even if the stations in this local region or sector are all overshadowed and don't light up any longer, it is a sight to remember. With this the satellite presented us with its final insight into the nature of things: synapses in a living brain. And the name we give to its functioning, its awareness of itself and its many parts - ' She smiled at me. 'It's why you saw the figure of Aphrodite. That's what holds all the trillions of stations into harmony.'
'Yes,' I said, 'it was harmonized, and over such distances. There was no coercion, only agreement.'
And the coordination of all the transmitting and receiving stations, I thought, we call Valis: Vast Active Living Intelligence System. Our friend who cannot die, who lies on this side of the grave and on the other. His love, I thought, is greater than empires. And unending.


http://www.phildickiangnosticism.com/blackknight.html




Web Phildickian Gnosticism



Phildickian Gnosticism: The many religions of Philip K. Dick
John Emerson, November 14, 2005

Does anyone have a copy of 'Disneyland of the Gods' by John Keel?
Perhaps there is mention as to where he got the information and date.
If not, I'll see if I can find a copy somewhere.

Oh gee, learn something new everyday

What picture did you have in mind of a polar orbit?

LOL........something that goes around the Arctic orbit perpetually :laugh:

John A. Keel's book 'Disneyland of The Gods' is out of print and hard to find.
The ones I did find were $47 on up.
I'll get a copy and see what exactly was written about this satellite.

tw....this is kind of the idea I had since it said it was going from east to west....or the opposite of our satellites......and in a tight polar orbit.

something going east to west would not cross many line of latitude.

Using my limited skills in Microsoft Paint I have drawn a diagram. The blue circle is the earth, and the yellow band is the equator. The white region at the top of the "sphere" is the north polar region. Within the plane of the equator, I have drawn an equatorial orbit, and given direction indicators for prograde and retrograde orbits, which go with and against the direction of rotation of the earth, respectively. I have also drawn a polar orbit in which is inclined at 90 degrees to an equatorial orbit.

I have drawn in red (It is thick and untidy because the original ellipse was converted mostly to black in the original JPEG compression) perhaps what you guys were imagining would have been the described orbit of this thing in a retrograde direction. This orbit is not physically possible to acheive, as the plane of the orbit does not intersect the center of mass of the earth. That being the case, there will always be a component of the gravitational force pulling it towards the plane of the equator and no equal opposing force to keep it at that latitude. A "polar" orbit (not an exact polar orbit) may be said to have retrograde motion (east-west, instead of west-east) if it is inclined at an angle slightly greater than 90 degrees to the equator.

Andrew.....I do not doubt your reference....but the link states the "satellite orbit goes from east to west".....wether it is accurate or not that is the polar orbit we are discussing

But if we ignore the lack of physical sense, that does not even make geometric sense, because if it was orbiting east-west around the north polar region then it would not be seen from Long Island in the USA. There are two mutually exclusive descriptions of its motion. It could be seen from Long Island in a proper polar orbit, as it could be seen from all points on the globe at one time or another in a polar orbit. Its motion would, however, be predominantly north-south or south-north if this was the case. However, there would be be a slight westward component to the motion as seen from earth as the orbit is neither prograde nor retrograde and the earth rotates underneath it. However, we are arguing about a description in a tertiary source, which is in any case riddled with errors showing that the author is largely ignorant of matters of astronomy and astronautics. If we are going to argue over the description, it should at least be that from the secondary sources.

andrew....I agree with you....I was just indicating what was mentioned in the "article".....not really what I agree with....[phew]

If something extraterrestrial was caught up in earth's orbit, it becomes the victim of gravity, and as such could only have an east to west orbit.

Am I right or am I wrong??? :headscrat

tw....if memory serves all orbits go west to east.....and the same is mentioned in the report above.