Mount Palomar Observatory Sightings and Cosmic-Ray Counter Anomalies

In 1949 Palomar Observatory opened on Palomar Mountain in San Diego County, California. Installed there that autumn was a recording cosmic-ray Geiger counter belonging to the Navy Electronics Laboratory at Point Loma, San Diego. Lower down the slopes, George Adamski ran the Palomar Gardens café. He would later become famous for far stranger claims. In October 1949 he was a bystander.

Friday, October 14, 1949. About 1:15 p.m. Harley C. Marshall, the observatory's Manager of Public Relations, saw a "perfect 'V of V's' formation" overhead. Some 16 to 18 silver objects, without tails or wings, traveling at high speed toward the northwest and emitting a sound like jets.

According to summaries of Brad Sparks's catalogue, the sound was "like jets but not quite the same." It lagged behind the objects by about 35 to 40 degrees. Marshall stopped his car and watched them disappear behind cloud cover that rose from the horizon to about 45 degrees. At 1:20 p.m., Benjamin B. Traxler, assistant superintendent (Electrical) for the observatory, saw one dark unidentified object traveling to the southwest.

Then came the detail that made the case. At the time of the sighting, the needle of the Navy counter had jumped off the scale for several seconds. Accounts differ on the order of events. In one, Marshall phoned Traxler. In another, Traxler saw his object while checking the recording equipment. Either way, Traxler could offer no explanation for the action of the Geiger counter.

It did not stop. Over the next 10 days the counter went off scale 21 more times, at scattered intervals. Accounts following Sparks say the spikes fitted a periodic 1.5-hour schedule, a phenomenon not seen before or after.

Two Office of Naval Research representatives and two Navy Electronics Laboratory staff, Joseph P. Maxfield and G. L. Bloom, visited the observatory. The laboratory's chief scientist, Dr. Albert B. Focke, a cosmic-ray researcher, handled the case. On October 21 and November 2 the Navy flew aircraft of various types near the observatory, using radio, altimeter and radar systems, trying to set off the counter. None of the attempts worked.

Investigators also heard that Adamski claimed UFO activity had increased. He sent them a photo taken through his 15-inch reflector in February 1949. The laboratory put it down to electric discharge in the camera during film pulling in a dry or cold climate.

Project Blue Book wrote off the readings as an equipment malfunction, a loose fuse clip. NICAP objected that a loose clip would turn the equipment off, not on, and pointed out that the Project Record Card mentions a radar tracking. In January 1953 the CIA's Robertson Panel reviewed Palomar alongside the Los Alamos "Bird Watchers Association" counter readings, found the Los Alamos data instrumental, and rejected any link between radioactivity and the objects in both cases. The formation itself was never specifically explained.

Brad Sparks lists the case among his Project Blue Book Unknowns. It surfaced in Saucer News under James W. Moseley, in a letter by James E. McDonald, in Flying Saucer Review and in Jerome Clark's The UFO Encyclopedia. NICAP files it among its nuclear connection cases. Two witnesses. One instrument. And a needle the Navy's aircraft could never make jump.