Part 2:
The Atmospheric Lens Effect and it's Relation to the UFO Phenomenon
Copy Right By G.k.Glatz
Here on earth this bending effect is the cause of the visual phenomenon that we experience as mirages, add to it the pollution in the air from our industrial revolution, and transportation revolution, and we see other sky effects that are misinterpreted as UFO's. I believe that the 10% of sighting that authorities have not been able to explain is answered by this phenomenon.

Back when I was a kid around 14 or 15 years old I had an experience that in later life I contributed to being a UFO.

I can remember it as though it were yesterday, it was in the summer, but I am not sure of the month. The sky was clear blue not a cloud to be seen. It was late after-noon and the sun was just beginning to set . My mother was setting on the front porch and I was standing in the yard. When all of a sudden my mother said," What is that?". She was pointing to the east/northeast at the top of the trees in the park across the street. I looked where she was pointing and saw it too. Neighbors setting on their porches started down in to the yard. One man turned to me and asked," What is that?". As if a kid would know if he didn't.

It came in over the top of the trees and by now was right over head. The edge of it when it was a long distance away, looked flat on the bottom and curved on top. Now with it over head you could see it was perfectly round. It was bright orange and shiny like metal or glass. At the time I did not realize, but later believed the color was from the setting sun reflecting off the bottom. There was no wind that day to push a balloon along, and it was going to fast to be a balloon anyway. It made no sound and there was no vapor trail. It continued on over our house to the west/southwest.

This was 1950 or 1951, we had no aircraft that looked anything like it. I had never heard of a UFO, nor had my mother or anyone else on that street.  I don't know if it was reported by any of the neighbors, but later after hearing and reading about UFO's I was sure it was no figment of our imagination and believed it to be a craft. Now 57 years later, with a lot more accumulated knowledge from schooling, study and reading, I now know what it was that we saw that day and it was no craft of any kind.

So what was it you ask?

I now know it was a projection of the setting sun on the air layers, caused by this atmosphere lens effect.
1) The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the object was traveling from east to west. Or I should say we the observers were traveling from the west to east on this revolving earth, and the object was not moving at all.
2) If we could have clocked it, I believe it would have appeared to be moving at the speed of the turning earth around 1000 mph.
3) It was a round flat circle and was the orange color of the setting sun. This is the same effect where travelers in the desert have seen what appears to be a city, town or some other object in the distance just ahead of them. Of course no matter how far they go it is never there, because it is a projection of some thing miles away in a different location.

A projection may occur from light reflected off an object, it doesn't have to be through a transparency. I know this only to well since I have in the past constructed my own projector using this principle. You simply take a box and mount a light bulb in the bottom, and mount a lens in one side of the box, and cut a rectangular hole in the side of the box opposite the lens. Any picture you hold over the hole will be projected enlarged on the wall or a screen, or you can hold a object up in the hole and it will be projected.

Sun light reflecting off a white or silver object such as a round oil storage tank could be projected miles away on the clouds, or dirty air layers, and be observed as a UFO.  Again the projection would appear to move, because the turning earth would change the angle of the projection.

Then we have the phenomenon of the UFO's that appear as lights in the sky at night. These are caused by light pollution that has become stronger over time, as the invention of electric lights has grown through out the world, and the lights have become higher in intensity. These lights can be project by the atmosphere hundreds of miles from the source that are actually originating them. People see them moving around in the sky with no seeming point of origin, and think they are illuminated craft. It all depends on the atmospheric conditions where these objects in the day time, or lights at night may appear. The effect is random and may or may not repeat to the same observers over a period of time.

Copyright by Gordon K. Glatz
In My Opinion