The Summer of Sixty-Nine

JENNY RANDLES looks back on her long involvement with the Jodrell Bank radio telescpope

This has been a momentous summer for space-related matters – highlighted in July by the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions that first landed humans on the Moon. That summer of 69 changed the world – inspiring exploration and cementing the fact that we are all on a tiny orb in the vastness of space. The modern passion for ecology began with a single photo taken by the command module pilot as the two men in the lunar lander docked with him and the globe of Earth formed a backdrop. That shot contained every human then alive apart from the photographer, Mike Collins.

Amidst the media blitz for the anniversary of these events, World Heritage status was fittingly granted to Jodrell Bank – the radio telescope near Goostrey in Cheshire aptly now put alongside Stonehenge and the Pyramids. Jodrell has been involved in the space programme for over 60 years and is dear to me from both an astronomical and UFO perspective.

In that summer of 69 I was starting my studies for physics A level. I had my own telescope and been to Jodrell watching the structure rise from the fields. I had also just joined BUFORA. As yet my involvement in UFOs was limited to pondering what might or might not be true, but that changed dramatically after I passed my A levels, was accepted to study astrophysics at Edinburgh just as my life was unravelling in other ways that would impact my immediate destiny.

Part of those forces (boyfriend related) involved me going instead to Manchester University where my astronomy course led me to Jodrell, as the facility was operated by the Uni. I learned from lecturers such as Professor Zdnek Kopal, who was pioneering the quest for planets around other stars thanks to radio telescopes like Jodrell.

We already knew the Moon was sterile. Indeed the University got some of the earliest rocks brought back by the Apollo flights to study because of Jodrell’s help to NASA proving this true. So it was an exciting period for me – though medical issues meant my scientific life would not go much further and instead I ended up investigating aliens in a very different way. However, as it turned out, my association with Jodrell Bank was far from over. During the next 30 years I would be back there a lot.

By 1980, my medical issues resolved, and my first book co-written with Peter Warrington, partly during long weeks in hospital in London, I was now coordinating investigations with BUFORA and writing for the US group created by Dr J Allen Hynek. Thanks to Allen’s support as a renowned astronomer at Northwestern University in Illinois helping train NASA astronauts – some of whom I met there – plus my time at Manchester Uni, I by chance became a UFO consultant for Jodrell. It was totally unofficial, as they reminded me more than once. They understandably preferred not to be perceived as having an open interest in the subject.

Still, as a result of this link in 1986 I recorded interviews for a documentary I wrote for the BBC there. I spoke to them most weeks for many years up to 2003 when I filmed one of my final media appearances at Jodrell for a BBC1 programme alongside Gail Porter and her lovely baby daughter. In the 1980s I also raised money for charity in the complex with local UFO group MUFORA as part of an ITV Telethon (pictured above). At Jodrell we sold UFO memorabilia and Peter Hough and I gave lectures in the planetarium. Special dispensation was required but our record had paved the way. I did get an odd question from an ITV reporter, not seemingly au fait with local knowledge, who looked genuinely bemused by my grin when she asked me: “Why would anyone report a UFO sighting to a bank?” Yet Jodrell Bank did pass on dozens of cases to me reported to them by equally puzzled citizens who assumed they (not Barclays) were the place to go.

Most observers of something odd would not realise that radio telescopes do not view things optically; they just knew it had a ‘telescope’, and so assumed they must have watched the ‘alien craft’ as they had done. Of course, virtually every case that came my way was not remotely to do with aliens. They were often aircraft heading into Manchester Airport, or satellites and other IFOs.

One that made me smile in a good way involved a man who had seen something rushing across the skies of Staffordshire one night. I recognised that it was probably just a meteor burning up in the atmosphere and Jodrell concurred. But the witness, content with the explanation, still had a request. Aware of the fact that amateurs did sometimes discover things in the sky, such as comets, he asked if I could arrange for Jodrell to name this meteor after his wife. I did not have the heart to say no, even though meteors are too common to have names. Why spoil the romance of this lovely idea?

Sometimes the involvement of Jodrell scientists was a little more direct and required me to be circumspect in what I said afterward to protect this unofficial cooperation between science and ufology. For example, in one case from Lancashire where police officers were called out to reports of strange dancing lights that the officers then saw themselves, we at MUFORA quickly suspected the cause and I talked to Jodrell. It seemed localised, as they had no other reports elsewhere but agreed our theory was possible. So Jodrell suggested they get results from equipment they were operating that revealed crucial data about the atmosphere at the time of the sighting. The results confirmed that the atmosphere had been conducive to a temperature inversion layer that would create a mirage with stars. Not unlike seeing a pool of water on the road ahead when you drive on a hot dry day – the pool really being part of the sky ‘relocated’ via this mirage – so too can bright stars or planets close to the horizon be the source of a baffling UFO mirage… as happened here.

One of the last cases I worked on with my contacts at Jodrell before I had to give up to be a full time carer happened on 2 July 2000 – World UFO Day. A man from Wythenshawe, Manchester, had called Jodrell to report being hit on the head by a tiny UFO whilst in the garden. It set his baseball cap on fire! Considering this might have been a falling meteorite, I talked to an astronomer at Jodrell, who after consulting their meteor specialist offered good reason to find this unlikely – so we brought in scientists from Manchester University and UMIST to assess the evidence and I agreed to report back to Jodrell. Sadly, the recovered rock was not local nor from space but very terrestrial. It also had gum on the back, suggesting it was a sample that was once stuck on a display card. It showed no evidence of having been heated, fallen from the sky and so caused the fire. The witness agreed he just found it in his garden afterward and presumed it was what hit him. There was local thunderstorm activity at the time that might be relevant. His TV set had suffered a power surge and needing repairing, so that might suggest ball lightning was the real culprit. But both Jodrell and I could only leave this one unresolved.