By JEFF JARDINE
From the voice mail and e-mail:
Chuck Traser of Modesto isn't a big believer in unidentified flying objects.
But after catching some intriguing stuff on his camera last week, he's certainly curious about the other kind of UFOs: unidentified falling objects.
The episode began when Traser, a 69-year-old retired electrician and admittedly amateur photographer, decided to take some photos of Wednesday night's lunar eclipse. But at 7:52 p.m. -- according to his camera -- Traser saw something other than the moon. He described it as "little sprinkles" of light fluttering down from the heavens.
"Ever see sparks come out of a chimney?" Traser asked. "That's what they looked like."
Except that he lives in a mobile home park.
"No fireplaces here," Traser said.
No Martians, either. Just the lights falling from the sky, he said.
Using a small, relatively inexpensive digital camera set at a slow shutter speed, Traser took some photos. With no tripod for stability, he held the camera in his hands. Thus, the photos show broken and unbroken lines of light in colors ranging from green to yellow to orange, streaming from the sky.
He wondered whether they might be fallout from the worn-out spy satellite shot down over the Pacific Ocean by a Navy missile 28 minutes before, but was skeptical.
"But you wouldn't think it would have been sparkly after a half-hour," Traser said.
Or would it?
"Due to the relatively low altitude of the satellite at the time of the engagement, debris will begin to re-enter the earth's atmosphere immediately," a Pentagon statement said at the time. "Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days."
Traser walked down the street, to the area where he thought the "sprinkles" landed. He found nothing.
"I should have taken a flashlight," he said, because it rained Thursday morning, leaving no traces of ash or debris.
Did he really photograph falling satellite debris? Or is this simply a case of operator error?
Air traffic control at the Modesto Airport heard of no similar sightings. Bill Luebke, who teaches astronomy at Modesto Junior College, looked at the photos and said the lines appear to reflect images of a "window in the distance," indicating pictures taken at a slow shutter speed and with an unsteady hand. Operator error, Luebke concluded.
Traser said, yes, he used a slow shutter setting and didn't hold the camera perfectly still. That accounts for the squiggly lines. And they do match up well with the windows in the homes along the street.
But he maintains he took the photos after seeing the sprinkles of light with his naked eye. The images in the photos weren't something he discovered after the fact, Traser said.
"I'd really be interested to find out what it was," he said.
MORE PORTER PROBLEMS -- Former Hickman resident Aaron Porter, son of murder defendant and former Hickman Community Church pastor Doug Porter, resigned his job as a police officer in Mobile, Ala., last week after being charged with possession of crack cocaine. He faces a March 15 preliminary hearing on the second-degree possession charge stemming from an investigation that led to the arrest of another Mobile police officer as well.
Aaron Porter, 32, briefly replaced his father as pastor of the Hickman church in 2005 before moving to Alabama in 2006.
Doug Porter, 57, remains in the Stanislaus County Jail without bail, awaiting the start of his murder trial May 12. He is accused of embezzling millions of dollars from 85-year-old Hickman rancher Frank E. Craig, who died when a pickup driven by Porter plunged into an irrigation canal in April 2004. It was the second serious crash in which Porter drove with Craig as his passenger.
GO, DOG, GO -- Last week, I wrote about the Newman Police Department's plans to bring back its K-9 program more than 20 years after it went dormant. The city put up $10,000 of the $25,000 needed to buy, house and maintain two multiuse dogs. The officers are raising the remaining $15,000.
Just four miles away in the Merced County town of Gustine, officer Ricky Stice also has a police dog program in the works.
"We took the less expensive route," he said. "We've probably got about $600 into it."
Stice's mom and brother donated a black labrador. "The runt of the litter," he said. And Merced County Sheriff's deputy Mark Taylor is donating his time to train the 2-year-old female, named Meeka.
Unlike the Newman dogs, which will be trained in apprehension and drug detection, Meeka will be trained only for drug-sniffing purposes. Stice and Meeka should be working the streets by mid-April. The Gustine Police Department hopes to raise maintenance costs by fund-raising. Information about the program appears on the "Gustine" page at www.westsidedogpark.com.
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/222307.html
