
FBI Mysteriously Closes New Mexico Observatory - creaghpatr
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/telescopes/a23107258/fbi-new-mexico-observatory/
======
fergbrain
Apparently it has “excellent views of Holloman AFB and White Sands Missile
Range”
([https://reddit.com/r/SpecialAccess/comments/9f91sm/_/e5uy1fd...](https://reddit.com/r/SpecialAccess/comments/9f91sm/_/e5uy1fd/?context=1))
. Further down, someone says that someone claims that the Chinese were using
the antenna array at the observatory to spy on missile tests at WSMR.

If the place was truly low on staff then this theory may not be so far
fetched.

~~~
RandomNick
I'm skeptical of that theory. Sunspot is up in the Lincoln National Forest.
There are multiple trails and locations that have a great view of White Sands
and Holloman AFB, which are located in the basin below. There isn't anything
special about the view from Sunspot that I can recall.

~~~
subcosmos
Other than a big telescope great for looking at things far away?

I used to work in astrophysics. Telescope operators are expected not to look
in certain places. Those were fun conversations.

My guess is they found a spy.

~~~
yasp
What kinds of places were you told not to look? (I'm guessing you couldn't
physically point it at targets on the ground, so I assume certain sections of
the sky.) Who was it that was commanding you not to look?

~~~
evil-olive
I work adjacent to some satellites that do visual-spectrum imaging of the
earth, and even we fall under these regulations.

In addition to all the NOAA licensing for imaging the ground, you need extra
licenses for taking pictures of space. (it's useful, for example, to image the
moon as a way of calibrating cameras & telescopes without atmospheric
interference, and tracking stars is one of the most reliable ways to determine
spacecraft attitude)

One of the requirements is that if we take a picture of space and there's
anything moving in the picture (presumably a near-earth satellite), we delete
all copies of the picture and forget we ever took it, but only after offering
it for sale to the Air Force at a commercially reasonable price.

I'm sure there are additional layers on top of it, that's just the facets of
it that I've been exposed to in the mandatory company-wide regulatory
training.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> but only after offering it for sale to the Air Force at a commercially
> reasonable price.

That sounds like a business model - what is a commercially reasonable price,
and where do I sign up?

~~~
dragonwriter
> That sounds like a business model

Does it? You have _one_ potential customer, and you have to create product on
spec, offer it to them at a price you don't control, and destroy the unsold
material whether or not the one customer pays for a copy.

Building a viable business model around that without corrupt influence over
the single buyer seems impractical.

------
LyndsySimon
I've been following this since the tenth, and it's weird for sure.

One thing that stands out to me - based on comments from people who live in
the area (and who I am confident actually _do_ ), the observatory is
transitioning from being owned by the federal government to a university.
They've gone through a significant staff reduction, and there was basically no
one there to tell to leave. Further, while it's been reported that it's
"closed to the public", I've seen cellphone video from people who have driven
there and walked around. There are no roadblocks, no visible police or
security presence... nothing. It's just abandoned.

In short, I'm not convinced this is being accurately reported.

~~~
sehugg
I'm not sure what you're implying. Because there's not a visible security
presence, the Alamogordo Daily News is making this up? After law enforcement
gets what they need, there's no reason to patrol the property.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> Because there's not a visible security presence, the Alamogordo Daily News
> is making this up?

Nope.

At this point, I believe that this was a fairly orderly shutdown (temporary or
permanent) that wasn't communicated very well. The "FBI" and "Blackhawk
helicopter" were probably federal employees removing federal property from the
observatory's antenna arrays before handing it over to the university. I
suppose it's possible that some of that could have been classified, since it's
situated within line of sight of a military base where project testing occurs
and it's conceivable that they might have used that site to received
telemetry, but I don't see any reason to think that it's anything more than a
case of poor communication between agencies and a pile-on by people who aren't
familiar with the details and who want to see something that isn't there.

Note that I was one of those people at first - I gave significant thought to
the idea that this was some sort of coverup associated with the coronal mass
ejection and the ensuing solar storm that happened right at the same time. As
time went on, other solar observatories starting going down and I got much
more intensely interested. I took a step back though, and did some more
looking around. The other observatory that went down first was in Hawaii,
where they were experiencing a tropical storm.

I'll keep watching this, but at this point I think it'll just fade away into
nothing, as there really is nothing happening there.

I will give a nod to one theorist on another forum who suggested that the
cryptic communication, lack of a press conference, and the local sheriff
denying knowledge of everything is all intended as an opportunity to study how
conspiracy theories are formed, investigated, and disseminated in online
forums. I hope that's the case, because I want to read that paper.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>At this point, I believe that this was a fairly orderly shutdown (temporary
or permanent) that wasn't communicated very well. The "FBI" and "Blackhawk
helicopter" were probably federal employees removing federal property from the
observatory's antenna arrays before handing it over to the university. I
suppose it's possible that some of that could have been classified, since it's
situated within line of sight of a military base where project testing occurs
and it's conceivable that they might have used that site to received
telemetry, but I don't see any reason to think that it's anything more than a
case of poor communication between agencies and a pile-on by people who aren't
familiar with the details and who want to see something that isn't there.

Also, it's really common to go overkill for training purposes.

For example, sending two F15s to go sit on the ground at an air show includes
them refueling mid-air and intercepting a B52 that's also headed to the same
air show so they can check those training boxes.

Sending the Navy seals to fast-rope in to an observatory and recover the
federally owned gigabit switches from the telecom closet is the kind of
overkill you get in the name of training.

~~~
some_account
Your post sounds like a diversion story to me.

------
mturmon
In the late 1990s I used imagery (taken on films and later digitized) from the
solar observatory at that site ("Sac Peak"). I later visited it for a
conference. It's highly remote, and the handful of astronomers there lived in
very basic conditions. I seem to remember a house trailer (i.e., a
"manufactured home").

Note, Sac Peak is nowhere near the other solar observatory in Kitt Peak, AZ,
and it is a daytime observatory as opposed to the much better-provisioned
nighttime observatory at nearby Apache Point, NM - where the relatively-new
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) telescope is.

It was a monastic lifestyle on the mountain there, and as the NSF has been
backing out of some of its older ground-based observatories in pursuit of
newer observing programs like DKIST (the big solar telescope in Hawaii) and
LSST, I imagine it has become even more uncomfortable.

~~~
Sharlin
> Sac Peak [...] is a daytime observatory [...]

A nighttime solar observatory would have certain... observational challenges.

~~~
codezero
Could always study the reflection of solar light: the gegenschein

------
wrs
>“Nobody would give us any information on what was going on,” House [the
sheriff] said, before the phone call cut out and repeated attempts to reach
him again were unsuccessful.

Seriously? Is this an ARG?

~~~
dredmorbius
It's difficult to express just how remote these areas are. I've not been to
Sunspot, though I've travelled nearby. Cellphone coverage is at best
extraordinarily sparse, towns infrequent, and not all those marked on maps
have much by way of services.

Gorgeous vistas, though. And staggering brushfires.

------
dlivingston
I was raised in Alamogordo (a satellite town to HAFB and directly 'down the
hill' from Sunspot) and, while I don't have any information other than what
other posters have offered, I can tell you that my entire family is farrr too
excited that our tiny little hometown is national news for once

Edit: for clarification, HAFB and all of White Sands Missile Range sits on
flatlands surrounded by two mountains; the Organ Mountains on the west (close
to Las Cruces) and Sunspot Observatory sits on the very edge of the mountain
ranges to the east. Spying on HAFB and WSMR from Sunspot is certainly
plausible.

~~~
rplst8
Isn't New Mexico State U there? The Aggies?

~~~
peapicker
No, NMSU main campus is over the Organ mountains to the west in Las Cruces. (I
graduated from there...) Alamogordo has a small branch-college-sized piece of
NMSU.

------
vorpalhex
That observatory is near a couple of bases. They likely want to fly some
experimental aircraft and minimize the amount of specialized recording
equipment in the area.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Why would they shut down the Post Office for that?

Most plausible theory I've seen so far is that the spying one. Maybe they were
posting hard-drives or USB sticks from there with footage of the base testing
some new equipment or something.

~~~
LyndsySimon
Why wouldn't they?

As best I can tell, the housing up there only serves employees at the
observatory, which is closed. What point would there be to keeping the post
office open?

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Oh OK, I didn't know that (I'm not in the US, just going off comments online
because it's an interesting story).

------
digitalneal
Wouldn't surprise me if some meth manufactures found the place to be fairly
empty and was operating out of one of the buildings. Only to get caught
shipping product somewhere and the FBI backtracked it to the observatory.

~~~
tunap
Heh, this is the most probable explanation yet, and it is being downed? This
is a real problem in the US for anyone that hasn't had a meth lab bust in
thier local hood, gated community or national/state/muni park.

~~~
cloakandswagger
This seems like a stupidly conspicuous location to setup a meth lab unless you
assume that not a single person visits the facility for months at a time and
no one would notice large plumes of smoke rising from it.

~~~
dsnuh
True, and I don't think it's a meth lab, but using abandoned military
buildings does have precedent on drug manufacturing:
[https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wamego-lsd-missile-
silo](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wamego-lsd-missile-silo)

------
yasp
Longer article at
[https://www.alamogordonews.com/story/news/local/2018/09/07/s...](https://www.alamogordonews.com/story/news/local/2018/09/07/sunspot-
observatory-south-cloudcroft-closed-due-security-issue/1227788002/)

Anyone have speculations on what this could be?

~~~
colanderman
Apparently the post office was shut down too [1]. Maybe something
dangerous/destructive/sensitive was mailed to/from the observatory? Would
explain the feds (since post office is federal) and the seemingly thorough
search of the property (crews on towers, etc.).

[1] [https://www.abqjournal.com/1219922/nm-solar-observatory-
clos...](https://www.abqjournal.com/1219922/nm-solar-observatory-closed-
authorities-mum.html)

~~~
wrs
When I look at that article, it’s just a bunch of thick gray lines, as if it’s
been completely redacted! Just a bug? Are we being trolled? It’s hilarious,
anyway.

(Edit: Ah, there’s a survey form that you have to click “skip” on to see the
story. Still hilarious.)

~~~
subcosmos
Complete our marketing survey and be rewarded with a free FOIA!

------
lamontcg
My guess is someone's ex-boyfriend/ex-husband had some OChem background and
decided to go a bit ted kaczynski. The FBI got involved due to threats of
explosives, they went into his apartment and found real evidence of bomb
making. Would also be consistent with the Post Office having been shut down if
he was planning on mailing anything.

Might also be politically motivated, but I'm going to bet on personal since
this observatory was specifically targeted, and not APO (an ex-grad student
who feels their academic career was destroyed by someone there would work as
well for me).

Or something that rhymes with that and is much more mundane than Chinese spies
or secret military tests (but of course just exceptional enough to get the FBI
involved and not the local cops -- so an actual credible bomb maker and not
just someone phoning in a threat).

~~~
lamontcg
Looks like I was on the right track, it was a "criminal investigation" and:

"During this time, we became concerned that a suspect in the investigation
potentially posed a threat to the safety of local staff and residents."

[https://www.space.com/41852-sunspot-solar-observatory-
openin...](https://www.space.com/41852-sunspot-solar-observatory-opening-
after-criminal-investigation.html)

------
simmers
Looks like a small sliver of the observatory is blurred on Google Maps.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7882221,-105.8176836,349a,35...](https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7882221,-105.8176836,349a,35y,270h,38.83t/data=!3m1!1e3)

~~~
lawlessone
looks ok to me, loading error?

~~~
notatoad
i'm seeing the same, it certainly looks like the intentional blurring that
google maps does for sensitive things:
[https://imgur.com/RqjnQTo](https://imgur.com/RqjnQTo)

~~~
kawfey
If you rotate around that blur, it appears to have depth, like it's just above
the surface. You can see beneath it at the right angle, revealing the top of
the dome.

------
strictnein
Comment on the gizmodo post on this states there's been hazmat suits and
possible mercury leakage:

[https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-it-starts-fbi-
suspiciously-l...](https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-it-starts-fbi-suspiciously-
locks-down-eva-1829012554)

~~~
CWuestefeld
From a liquid mirror, maybe?

------
jploh
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/new-
mexico...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/new-mexico-
observatory-child-porn)

------
wolfpwner
[https://www.ktsm.com/news/local/el-paso-news/child-
pornograp...](https://www.ktsm.com/news/local/el-paso-news/child-pornography-
reason-behind-sunspot-observatory-closure-according-to-court-
documents/1460386237)

------
abruzzi
The photo in that article is not of the Sunspot Observatory, but of the Apache
Point Observatory next door. I wonder if it is just Sunspot or both? I haven’t
been up there since spring but I usually visit several times a year, so I’m
very curious what’s going on. I may head up to APO this weekend and see if I
can get on premesis.

------
guilhas
Emergency evacuation drill for a Nuclear/terrorism attack. Theory suggestion.

------
joshuaheard
The final scene of "Starman" with Jeff Bridges?

------
gammateam
Isn't this a Stephen King movie?

~~~
Rebelgecko
It's also reminiscent of a plot point from "Anathem" which came out almost
exactly 10 years ago

~~~
strictnein
The thousanders are up there?

------
swingline-747
It's closed due to UFOs. ;D

------
paultopia
ALIENS.

(But seriously, my guess would be some kind of DoD/security thing? Was someone
there doing military research and got hacked? Because that would explain why
the FBI would lock it down and not let anyone else in law enforcement go
near...)

