Secrets of the Night Sky / Bizarre Cryptid Encounters

Hosted byGeorge Noory

Secrets of the Night Sky / Bizarre Cryptid Encounters

About the show

Steve Kates also known as "Dr. Sky" has been engaged in the science of astronomy for well over thirty years. In the first half, he shared secrets of the night sky and the many ways and times to spot planets, meteors, comets, and eclipses. Binoculars are an excellent way to get started in skywatching, he noted. During early August, he continued, if you look with binoculars due south around 9 or 10pm, you might make out the grandeur of the Milky Way, the galaxy that we're embedded in. He commented that he finds 'Oumuamua to be one of the most fascinating visitors to our solar system--it's the first interstellar asteroid ever detected, and its pattern of acceleration after it moved closest to the sun is very curious.

The yearly Perseid meteor shower will be viewable in the northeast sky after midnight around August 8th. The meteors are coming from a comet called Swift-Tuttle (discovered in 1862) that rotates around the sun every 133 years. The comet's nucleus is some 20 miles in diameter, and theoretically could prove dangerous to Earth in some of its passes, he cited, coming within 14 million miles in 2126, and a mere million miles in the year 3044. Kates also reported on upcoming eclipses-- an annular eclipse on October 14th, 2023, will be viewable in the western US, in which the moon will partially obscure the sun, creating the appearance of a ring of fire around it. Then, on April 8th, 2024, a total solar eclipse will cut a swath over Mexico and the United States.

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Fortean and paranormal researcher Lon Strickler has written several books on mysterious and bizarre encounters. In the latter half, he discussed the repeated sightings of a flying humanoid creature he calls the Chicago Phantom (view related images/info), and various other unexplained cryptids. The winged entity sightings in Chicago started in 2011, with witnesses describing its wings as bat-like. Reports accelerated in 2017 with descriptions varying from a Mothman insectoid-type being to an 'Owl Man' (like La Lechuza) to a creature resembling a gargoyle, he detailed. Since 2019, most of the reports are clustered in an area near O'Hare International Airport and the suburb of Rosemont, he specified. The winged beings strike him as more animal than human, and it's almost as though they want to be seen, he suggested.

Sightings of "pale humanoids" are on the increase, Strickler revealed. The pale-looking "walkers" or "crawlers" seem to be amorphous and hairless, with very few features to their faces, and they sometimes emit frightening noises, he noted. Sightings initially were more prevalent in forested areas such as the Sierra Nevadas in California, but now have expanded globally, including Poland. He also delved into his personal sighting of a Bigfoot-like creature, and shared reports of Dogman seen in Alabama, and "Not Deer," an anomalous moose-like animal observed in Appalachia. Regarding the ET question, Strickler has concluded that the greys are likely humans visiting from our future.

News segment guests: Lauren Weinstein, Steve Kates

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