Event at the SSSC

by Christina Gasser
in Zeugenbuch (Schmidrüti, Switzerland: 2001), pp. 348-49
translated by J. W. Deardorff, May 2011

It was on the evening of April 28, 1990. Atlant Bieri, at that time a 10-year old youngster, had recently received a telescope as a present. Naturally he wanted to try it out, and so he asked me to help him carry it to the house square [just south of the house; see map, No. 9] and set it up. Whoever knows Atlant will know that this undertaking would not occur without much hullabaloo over the matter.

When the telescope was finally standing, Atlant was eager to search the sky with it. It was a clear, starry night and the third day after the full Moon; Atlant now wanted to inspect the Moon, which was still almost full. However, it was not so simple to fine-tune the telescope properly, as he would soon notice. I would gladly have helped him, not least because I myself was burning to finally see something. Yet, for no price was Atlant prepared to give up his place.

In the meantime Edith Beldi was also attracted by the tumult and joined us. She would also have liked to cast a glance through the telescope at the very beautiful Moon, which presented itself before us so bright and fascinating. Yet with her "Please" to Atlant she had just as little success as I, and there remained nothing left for us than to exercise patience.

Christian Krukowski and Adrian Fischer, who had worked at the Center this Saturday and now were ready to drive home, remained standing with us. We all looked up into the endless expanse of space and exchanged a few words.

Atlant broke into our meditative mood, when he suddenly cried out that he had discovered a new moon, and how uproariously he danced around the tripod! Billy, who also had come to the front of the residence, appraised this new discovery and explained to Atlant, that it was only a reflection in the lenses. Finally the telescope was correctly adjusted, and with many "Oohs" and "Ahs" we now took turns observing the Moon with its craters.

At times we scanned the skies for the known constellations, until we suddenly noticed a so-called UFO, the size of a star, which gradually moved along its way over the Center. Attentively we followed its movement, when Billy asked Atlant whether he should cause it to brighten up. Atlant enthusiastically assented to Billy's question.

We all looked expectantly at the sky, and had scarcely breathed in and out, when the flying object increased threefold in size and shined brightly. While we others were silently bewildered, Atlant wanted for sure to know how it functioned and how one could do that. Billy explained to him that this was an unmanned telemeter disk, and he had only to concentrate in a certain way, in order to get such an object to brighten up.

This night we discovered still more telemeter disks, and it was as if each of them flashed a short greeting to us.

The telescope stood to one side deserted; we had forgotten our playful tussles for the supposed best place at the telescope. Our horizon had been broadened in the truest sense of the word. We then each again went his way, though I'm sure that the memory of this experience will cling to each of us for a long time.