Solway-Firth Cosmonaut (also known as Solway Cosmonaut and Cumberland Cosmonaut ) - a figure in a photograph taken in 1964 by fireman, photographer and local historian Jim Templeton (February 13, 1920 - November 27, 2011). The famous photograph was taken at Burg Marsh, Solway Firth , Cumbria , England . Templeton claimed that the figure in the suit was imprinted in the background, and insisted that he did not see anyone nearby when he took the picture. The image was widely circulated in modern newspapers [1] and won the attention of ufologists [2] .
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| Jim Templeton | ||
| Solway Firth Cosmonaut . 1964 | ||
| Zeiss Contax Pentacon F SLR | ||
Content
Photography
On May 23, 1964, Jim Templeton, a firefighter from Carlisle , Cumberland (now part of Cumbria), took three photographs of his five-year-old daughter during a day trip to Burg Marsh. Templeton stated that the only people in the swamps besides him and his daughter that day were several old women sitting in a car at the far end of the swamp. In a letter to The Daily Mail in 2002, Templeton stated:
| I took three photographs of my daughter Elizabeth in a similar pose - and was shocked when the second photo came back from the Kodak development, in the background something like an astronaut was captured. |
Templeton insisted that he did not see the figure until the development of his photographs, and Kodak analysts confirmed that the photograph was genuine [1] .
Since then, it has been suggested that the astronaut is actually Templeton's wife, Annie, who was present on the trip and captured in other photographs taken that day. Since the Templeton’s Zeiss Contax Pentacon F SLR camera displays only 70% of the actual photo in the viewfinder , it’s possible that he took a photo without noticing his wife on the periphery of the frame. Annie was wearing a pale blue dress that day, which in other photographs taken that day was overexposed and looked like white. She also had dark cropped hair. If you use computer image processing, darkening the image and straightening the horizon, the astronaut becomes like a figure of an ordinary person, visible from the back [3] .
Publicity
Templeton told reporters:
| I brought the photo to Carlisle police, who after many doubts examined him and stated that there was nothing suspicious about this. The local newspaper Cumberland News picked up this story, and within a few hours the whole world found out about it. The photo, of course, is not fake, and I am surprised like no one else how this figure appeared in the background. Over the four decades that the photo was in the public domain, I received many thousands of letters from around the world with various ideas and perspectives - most of which do not make much sense to me. |
Templeton claimed that after the photo was published, he was visited by two men who claimed to be working for the government but refused to show their ID. “They said that they work for the government and that they are identified only by a personal number [4] .” After he showed them the place where the photographs were taken and explained that he did not see the figure during the shooting, the people became angry and left, leaving him alone [1] .
In an interview with BBC Look North and a letter to The Daily Mail, Templeton also claimed that the launch of the Blue Streak rocket at the Woomera test site in South Australia was interrupted twice, as two large men were spotted at the test site. Templeton claimed that later the technicians saw his photograph in an Australian newspaper and said that the figures were exactly the same [5] .
In response to a request from ufologists to let them know whether the photo is of interest to the authorities, the UK Department of Defense officially stated that Templeton's photo does not interest them [6] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 Lytollis, R. ET PHONE CUMBRIA , Times & Star (July 7, 2007). Archived July 16, 2013. Date of treatment May 26, 2013.
- ↑ Thompson, A FAMOUS UFO SIGHTINGS FROM THE PAST . Whitehaven News (August 16, 2005). Date of treatment August 8, 2013. Archived July 9, 2014.
- ↑ Roberts, Andy; Dr. David Clarke. Solway Spaceman Solved? (Eng.) // Fortean Times : magazine. - 2013 .-- September ( no. 305 ). - P. 28 .
- ↑ The Men in Black are real , Daily Mirror , The Free Library (September 16, 1997). Date of treatment May 26, 2013.
- ↑ Jim Templeton interview. BBC Look North . BBC BBC One . January 10, 2008. Series 1/1.
- ↑ Government not doing enough to investigate sightings, says Cumbrian UFO expert (August 13, 2011). Archived August 24, 2011. Date of treatment August 29, 2011.
Links
- Story, Chris. " Suspected UFO sighting leads to Cumbria hotspot claim. ". News & Star (February 25, 2009).