Rendlesham 1980: Visualisation · Signals from the Periphery

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THE FOREST

Subject

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Value

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State

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RENDLESHAM 1980
26-28 Dec 1980 · two nights, one memo
8.56 km due east, a 5,000,000 cd light, every 5 s
the beam stands 2 arcminutes above eye level
the airmen's own statements name the lighthouse
the counter never reached its first graduation
walk the mile · read the tape · check the sky

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Evidence

fact ⇄ what kind of claim · live

Three nights, the statements, Halt's 18-minute tape, the memo

the chronology and every quote are the documented record, verbatim

REPORTED

8.56 km at 99° magnetic; the beam clears the ridge by 1.6 m, +2′ off eye level

published coordinates + spot heights + standard refraction, closed form

EXACT

One flash every 5.0 s; the tape's own calls beat at 5 s

a 3-panel optic turning once per 15 s (Trinity House); one timed interval, labelled

EXACT

5,000,000 cd at 8.56 km: magnitude -9, ~1,300× Sirius on a clear night

inverse square + Koschmieder extinction; visibility is a dial, not a guess

EXACT

Peak 0.07 mR/h = 14% of the lowest scale; same clicks half a mile away

conversions exact; readings as taped; the verdict is the manufacturer's (via NRPB)

EXACT

Sirius 10.6° south at 03:15; Vega 9.1° and Deneb 8.1° north at 03:05

GMST + catalogue, machine-checked, drawn beside Halt's words

EXACT

The trees, the farm, the path, the terrain between spot heights

staging around the published anchors; the Shipwash character is unconfirmed

MODELLED

What the three nights became in the men's lives

the one file this bench prices nothing of

READING

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The forest

The walk0 m

East Gate to Halt's turnaround, the record's own mile and a half. 0 m is the claimed landing site.

Meteorological visibility20 km

Koschmieder extinction over 8.56 km. Clear nights deliver mag -9 to -10; haze collapses the flash a hundredfold. This dial is why later visitors were often unimpressed.

The lighthouseswitch Orfordness off and see what case remains

The forestfell the trees: bare sightline to the coast

Labels

The tape

The tape clock01:57 UT

01:00 to 04:10, the hours the cassette covers. Only the starred entries carry spoken timestamps.

Sceptical annotationseach entry's terrestrial reading, labelled

The counter

Reading0.070 mR/h

The tape's cluster is 0.02-0.04, the one spike 0.07, the memo's figure 0.1. Slide it and watch the needle against the first major graduation.

Read in µSv/h1 mR ≈ 8.77 µGy air kerma, exact

The sky

Hour (UT)03:15 UT

00:00 to 06:00 on 28 December. Halt's three reported objects light up at his stated times; the stars run on rails the tune script checks.

Scintillationwhat turbulence does to low bright stars

Readout · live

Bearing to the light

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Beam above eye level

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Ridge clearance

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Flash, apparent

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vs Sirius

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Reading ×bg / %FS

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What is exact vs modelled here

Exact: the geodesy (8.56 km, 099° magnetic), the sightline (1.6 m ridge clearance, +2′ elevation), the photometry (mag -9 at V = 20 km), the five-second clock, the radiation conversions, and the star and moon positions for that night. Reported: the whole chronology, every tape quote, the witness statements, the readings, Thurkettle's findings, the police log, the re-surveys, the denials and the file gap. Modelled: tree placement, the farm, the path, the terrain between the published spot heights, the tree-gap winking, and the Shipwash flash (character unconfirmed). There is no fitted constant anywhere on this bench.

The model, in full

Distance and bearing come from the published coordinates in closed form. The sightline drops both ridge and lantern by d²/2R with R = 7/6 Earth radii (standard refraction) and reads clearance and elevation off the straight line. Illuminance is I/d² times Koschmieder extinction exp(-3.912·d/V); magnitude is -2.5·log₁₀(E/2.54×10⁻⁶). The sky is GMST plus the J2000 catalogue in alt-az, the moon a truncated Meeus series labelled approximate. Every anchor is checked in scripts/rendlesham-tune.mjs.

Where this instrument takes liberties

The forest is staged: real published distances and heights, invented trees. The winking of the flash between trunks is a seeded noise field standing in for real trunk occlusion. The Shipwash light's 1980 character and station are unconfirmed and drawn generic. The Halt-tape entries without spoken timestamps are placed in order between the stamped ones. The moon is accurate to about a third of a degree, and says so.

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