70 Virginis Event

A few years ago I posited that an extra-ordinary event occured in the
direction of 70 Virginis (which has an extra-solar planet candidate) as
one of the results of a science fair paper/project I did with my
daughter, which was titled

Are There Extra-Ordinary Objects Near Extra-solar Planets? (which one
can find at the following link)

http://www.cfas.org/Library/extra-solar-planets.htm

After that, I made a post (only in the sci.astro.seti NG) regarding 70
Virginis as described in that paper. In it I posited that when one
compares the POSS I Palomar Sky Survey plate to later plates, one will
find that 3 star-like objects dissappear. Because it is a 50 minute
exposure on a photographic plate, I suppose that one can probably rule
out a NEARBY broken up asteroid or comet as the three objects are very
pointlike (i.e. not trailing.) Here is a blink-comparison of the old
Palomar survey plate to a newer one

http://jasonhigley.com/70virginis.gif

Anyone can verify this by going to Skyview at
http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/skvadvanced.pl
or any other DSS site and punching in 70 Virginis and selecting the
Digitized Sky Survey.

After that post, I recall somebody speculating on that thread that the
triple objects appearance was possibly the result of a spill of coffee
by a careless astronomer :^) This was slightly irksome to me because I
had also felt that perhaps it was some electronic noise artifact that
was introduced during the scanning of the original Palomar plates.

Well, tonight I was able to rule out those objects as being a noise
artifact. THEY ARE NOT NOISE OR SCANNER IMAGING ARTIFACTS! How do I
know? Because as luck would have it, while I was training to become an
observatory operator at the University of Central Florida, I found out
that tucked away in some old custom-made wooden cabinets on wheels were
a complete set of negative prints of the original Palomar Sky Survey
plates taken in the 1950's!

(As a historical note, the negative plate prints have stamped on them
"U.S.F. Library", not U.C.F., and they are "COPYRIGHT NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY - PALOMAR OBSERVATORY SKY SURVEY". I tried using an
online DSS plate finder at
http://130.167.1.148/cgi-bin/dss_plate_finder
to locate 70 Virginis on them; the plate-finder accurately showed where
on the plate objects should appear, and which date they were made, but
SFAIK it isn't useful for finding the actual negative plate prints
because the plate numbers didn't match what is inset on the negative
plate prints! I wasted much time looking for a plate number that
didn't exist. Once I determined that the plate numbers didn't match up
(by looking on a different plate for a big easy to find object, which
was M51) I quickly learned that I needed to find 70 Virginis the
old-fashioned way, with the plate RA/DEC's (each spanning a whopping 6
degree field) and the plate-finder's exact locating of it on the plate.
The above plate-finder had me looking for plate XE497 (08WT) but the
actual plate is E-1420 May 15/16 1955 13h16m43s +11deg 29'55", with the
"E" indicating which filter was used; this collection has "E" and "O"
plates of each field.)

Anyway, long story short, I now have 100% confidence that something
extra-ordinary happened in the direction of 70 Virginis on May 15-16
1955 (what it was though I don't know, but there is a planetary system
very near the line of sight! Were they stellar objects that were flung
off into space? Was it a natural event? Was E.T. sending a 3-light
beacon? :^)

Using the astronomical catalogs on SkyView and other sources, nobody
SFAIK has ever cataloged these 3 objects near 70 Virginis. If anyone
has any other images from around the 1955 time period of 70 Virginis,
or knows where I can find them, please post here about it.

Thanks, Jason Higley