UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Was it a bird? Was it a plane? A meteor? Space junk? An alien spaceship? Superman?

Over the past couple of days, photos and videos taken by Robert Neil Moore that show an unidentified flying object soaring through the sky Saturday afternoon above his home off Quail Mine Road in the Big Hill area have captured the imagination of many on social media.

A picture of the object that Moore posted to the Tuolumne County Incident Feed group on Facebook has generated nearly 300 reactions and more than 60 comments from people offering up their theories that range from playful to apocalyptic.

Some offered links about recently launched satellites and spacecraft. Others posted memes of Superman, nuclear explosions and aliens.

But is there a more simple explanation than a precursor to an extraterrestrial invasion, or some sort of a top-secret government conspiracy to turn the population into mindless drones?

Moore said he had just picked up his daughter-in-law for a family dinner at his home when he first spotted the object about 4:55 p.m. while looking out at the horizon northwest toward Sacramento.

“We were thinking that thing looks weird,” he said of the object. “It doesn’t look like a normal airplane.”

Moore, who works for a machining company in Soulsbyville, ran inside to get his phone and started shooting pictures and video about 4:57 p.m. By about 5 p.m. the object was passing directly above his house.

The object appeared to be headed south toward Los Angeles.

Private aircraft frequently fly over Moore’s home going to and from the nearby Columbia Airport, but Moore said the object on Saturday appeared to be higher than most other airplanes he’s seen in the nearly two years he’s lived there.

“I’m always looking up at the sky,” Moore said. “You never know what you’re going to see up there.”

There was a low rumbling noise and a large plume trailing from the back of the object. Moore said there wasn’t anything breaking off from it, so he doesn’t think it was a meteor entering the earth’s atmosphere.

Moore said he believes it may have been an experimental aircraft of some kind, but he doesn’t believe it was a commercial jetliner due to how fast it was moving.

“I’m wondering just like everybody else,” Moore said.

Benedict Stuth, manager of the two county-operated airports in Columbia and Pine Mountain Lake, commented on the Facebook thread that it could have been a number of commercial jetliners that regularly fly over the area.

Stuth said in an interview on Tuesday the contrails made by the object match those made by a typical commercial jet traveling at high altitudes. He also said the object could appear orange because of the time of day.

“When you have an aircraft that high, it’s going to catch the sun’s rays like the clouds do,” Stuth explained. “That’s why you’ll see orange and pink clouds during sunset.”

The speed in which the aircraft passed overhead also leads Stuth to believe the object was likely just a typical plane. He said a meteor would have passed by in seconds, not minutes.

Based on the limited photo evidence, Stuth said he would confidently say the object was a airplane.

“Everything pretty much points to it being an aircraft, in my opinion,” Stuth said, adding that he would still reserve a small chance it could have been something else. “I’ll give anybody the benefit of the doubt, because we don’t have absolute clear pictures showing that it’s x, y, or z.”

Stuth, who previously worked as a consultant at Los Angeles International Airport, said he’s encountered a number of conspiracy theories over his aviation career that can much more easily be explained by science.

For example, one that Stuth still receives calls about is a popular conspiracy theory that contrails are really chemical compounds being sprayed by the government to control people’s minds.

“It’s basically just condensed water that’s reacting to a fast-moving object at high altitude,” Stuth said of airplane contrails. “It’s just a natural occurrence.”

Stuth pointed to a website called Planefinder.net that uses technology to track airplane flights in real-time across the globe.

Going back to Saturday between 4:55 p.m. and 5 p.m. shows American Airlines flight AA126 from Hong Kong to Dallas in a Boeing 777-323 flying from west to east above the Big Hill area at 34,975 feet.

“Going from west to east is a very common flight path from San Francisco that goes right over our area,” Stuth said while looking at the path of the American Airlines on Saturday. “Just about any flights from the Pacific Northwest down south tend to go over our area as well.”

However, Moore said he saw the object Saturday moving north to south.

One possible explanation for the contradicting routes is that directions can easily become confusing when looking up at the sky, according to Stuth. For example, he said that he thought a plane on Tuesday was flying over the airport from the north until someone corrected him that it was the west.

Planefinder.net" target="_blank">dir="ltr">Planefinder.net also says it strives to ensure its live tracking does not compromise national or regional security and will consider requests to block those aircraft from its system for that reason.

There didn’t appear to be any reports made to the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office regarding the object, Sheriff’s spokeswoman Sgt. Andrea Benson said via email.

The Union Democrat reached out to NASA in a quest for answers Tuesday, but has yet to receive a response.

“If it wasn’t a plane, I’m going full on UFO,” Stuth joked.

Contact Alex MacLean at amaclean@uniondemocrat.com or (209) 588-4530.

In Andy Weir's "Artemis" (Crown, 2017), the lead character is drawn into a crime caper on a lunar city. Weir is known for "The Martian" (Crown, 2014) which described in realistic detail how someone would survive being stranded on Mars. In "Artemis," Weir brings a similar realism to the moon as the ultimate tourist destination.

"Artemis" was released today (Nov. 14) as a novel and audiobook featuring Rosario Dawson.

Space.com talked with Weir about the world of "Artemis"; creating its lead character, Jazz; and how "the moon is basically made of moon bases, with some assembly required." [How Moon Bases and Lunar Colonies Work (Infographic)]

**"Artemis" (Crown, 2017) by Andy Weir.**

Space.com: Can you talk about how the idea for "Artemis" first developed?

Andy Weir: I wanted to design a city on the moon. I wanted to come up with a city on the moon and a reason for there to be a city on the moon. I came up with the city and how it was built and what its economic foundation was and everything long before I came up with the story or characters to take place in it. I guess that's kind of — world-building and making settings is fun. The actual writing part is no fun. That's kind of where the original idea came from.

Space.com: What kinds of stories did you try to set in that city before you finally settled on one?

Weir: I went through a few revisions. "Artemis," as it is right now, was kind of my third attempt at a story, and that's the one that stuck. The first two revisions just weren't very good. I may steal elements of them someday, so I'm not really telling people what they are. But in the first revision, Jazz — who is the main character in "Artemis" — Jazz was a very minor, tertiary character. I just needed a comedy smuggler type, and so I invented her for that. And I didn't like the plot that had developed, and in the next revision of story, Jazz was much more prominent, but still not the main character, and then I realized, well, the fun part here is Jazz anyway, so why not write a story about her? So that's how I landed on the current plot.

Space.com: What drew you to writing about Jazz in particular?

Weir: In every version and as it went forward, she was the one who got all the funny lines. She's the smart-ass. Shes kind of the lovable rogue archetype. I really like that type of character, and so I had fun writing her.

Space.com: How did you come up with the technology that made a moon base possible?

Weir: The cool thing is, everything in "Artemis" is actually technology that already exists. Really, it was more research than developing technology, although trying to figure out the most efficient way to build a city on the moon was kind of cool. Like, how do you build a city on the moon when you want to absolutely minimize the amount of mass you send to the moon. Well, cities are big, and they weigh a lot, so you're going to want to make the city with materials that are present, not ship it over in its entirety. That's why they would smelt the anorthite [the material the lunar highlands are made of] into aluminum, and that also gives you oxygen.

A smelter lets the denizens of the moon base Artemis smelt raw materials on the moon into aluminum, oxygen, silicon and calcium.

Credit: Crown Publishers

It's really cool, actually — the moon is basically made of moon bases, with some assembly required. In the lunar highlands, which is the part of the moon that is not smooth — if you look at the moon, you see the smooth parts and the bumpy bits. The lunar highlands are the bumpy bits — 85 percent of the rocks just lying around on the ground are anorthite, which is a mineral, and you can smelt that into aluminum, oxygen, silicon and calcium. That gives you aluminum to make your moon city out of and oxygen to fill it. And by the way, if you want glass or windows, it also gives you silicon, and there's a bunch of oxygen still. Silicon and oxygen makes glass, and — yeah. It's really cool. It's like it's just there, just waiting for us. If we could just get there.

And so, the conceit of the story is that the commercial space industry has driven the price of low-Earth orbit down to the point that middle class people can afford to go to space. And Artemis' economy is based on tourism. For me, one thing is when I'm reading a book I get hung up on the economy of fictional environments. I'm like, wait a minute, why does this city exist? Why would people live there? Why wouldn't they go somewhere else? Stuff like that. For a lunar city, the thing I came up with was tourism. If middle class people can afford to go to the moon, even if they had to get a second mortgage to afford it, I think a lot of people would.

Space.com: And you calculated exactly how much it would cost, given those conditions, to transport objects and people to the moon, and therefore developed what the society there would be like.

**Andy Weir, author of "Artemis" and "The Martian."**

Weir: I came up with this whole economic thing — I actually wrote a paper on it, and we're going to try to get that out there via an outlet later.

I don't describe any of that in the book; that's what I came up with in advance. What we learned from "The Phantom Menace" — don't start a science fiction story with a description of supply-side economics. But it's important to me that that work out.

Space.com: Would you rather live on the moon or Mars, assuming both of them had equivalent infrastructure?

Weir: I'd rather live on Earth, all things considered. I write about brave people. I'm not one of them. If I had to choose between the moon or Mars, I would choose the moon, even if they had the same infrastructure, if they both had cities and stuff. Just on the grounds that the moon is still safer, because if things go really, really bad, you can leave and go to Earth. On Mars, if things go bad, you're on your own.

To put it in perspective of how much further away Mars is than the moon, imagine you're on a football field, and you're at one goal line and Mars is at the other goal line. The moon would be about 4 inches [10 centimeters] in front of you. [Dazzling 'Museum of the Moon' Exhibit Celebrates 'Artemis' in NYC]

Space.com: How was the experience of writing a different lead character and voice than "The Martian"?

Weir: Well, I still got to use the first person, smart-ass narrative style, so it wasn't that big a change. I guess the real change was — first off, I did my best at writing a female lead, but in the end, I'm not a woman, so I'm sure there's lots of places where she ends up sounding like a guy. I ran it by as many women as I could, in my inner circle, people I can trust with a manuscript before it releases, and got feedback from all the women, and gave it my best shot.

And also, Jazz is a much more nuanced and flawed character than Mark Watney. Mark Watney — you can't help but like him, he's just this guy that's in a terrible situation that's not really his fault, whereas Jazz's problems are mostly self-inflicted. She's made a lot of bad decisions, and makes additional bad decisions during the book. The way I like to say it is, Mark Watney is based on the idealized version of me. He's everything I wish I were. He has the qualities of myself that I like and none of my many flaws, and he doesn't have any of my neuroses. Jazz is a little bit more like the real me. Flawed, has bad decisions in her past, makes mistakes. Smart, but doesn't always apply that correctly. Jazz is actually a lot more like the real me, so it's always kind of sad when I read a review that says, "Oh, I didn't like Jazz much." I'm like, "Awww."