In September 2018 there was great excitement: the FBI closed an observatory in New Mexico at great expense.
But things apparently became even more mysterious: At the same time, according to the rumor mill, six other observatories around the world were said to have been closed.
The spreaders of that rumor agreed on the reason: those observatories discovered something they shouldn't have discovered! Maybe Planet X, maybe an alien armada?
The real closure
In fact, the FBI closed the Sunspot Solar Observatory on Sacramento Peak in New Mexico. As the name suggests, this observatory is specifically designed for solar observation. Some people now felt called upon to play amateur researchers and took photos of the sun with their smartphones.

The photos above are the ones that spread the most: they claim to show a huge UFO near the sun, photographed with an iPhone 8. Unfortunately, no one else seems to have been able to verify this claim, and anyone who knows smartphone cameras actually knows that lens reflections, especially when you're like that is intelligent, so wanting to photograph the sun is only natural.
So smartphones are extremely unsuitable for uncovering a conspiracy, but why was the observatory shut down by the FBI?
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) provides the explanation :
The reason for the closure was not aliens, but of a very terrestrial nature!
“AURA is cooperating with an ongoing police investigation into criminal activity at Sacramento Peak. During this time, we were advised that a suspect in the investigation may pose a threat to the safety of local personnel and residents. For this reason, AURA has temporarily left the facility and stopped scientific activities at this location.”
The final solution now sounds a little less dramatic:
the caretaker distributed child pornography via the observatory's WiFi The FBI therefore closed the entire observatory so that the man would not become suspicious. It also had to be ensured that no evidence was destroyed and whether the caretaker was acting alone or other observatory employees were involved in the matter.
The other closures
The alleged proof of the closures can be found on various sites: the switched off webcams.
All these solar/space cams down at the same time:
- AXIS 232D Network Dome Camera located in Sydney Australia
- Webcams located at SOAR Observatory – The Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope located in Chile
- BRT Tenerife Telescope Webcam located in Spain
- Webcam located at Mauna Kea observatory at the University of Hawaii Hilo
- Webcam from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope observatory in Hawaii
- Webcam at JAT OBservatory in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
Then let's go through the webcams!
- Sidney, Australia : The link leads to a webcam that is no longer in use, the observatory webcams can be found here
- Chile: This link exists for over two years no longer, it was then redirected to the new page, which can be found here
Screenshot mimikama.org - Spain : The site last existed in 2017 , and the link didn't even lead directly to a telescope webcam, but to an outside view. The current cameras can be found here
- Manua Kea, Hawaii : This camera has been offline since mid-2017 , and the same image has been visible on the website since then
- Canada-France, Hawaii : This camera has been offline November 2017
- Pennsylvania : The domain has expired since at least May 2018 and has not been reassigned
Conclusion
Of the seven observatories, only one was actually closed by the FBI, the reason being the caretaker was distributing child pornography over the WiFi.
The other six observatories were never closed. The only evidence, the “webcams turned off,” is not evidence because the links are all out of date. Those webcams have been switched off for months or have long since had other Internet sites.
Someone probably booked links to the webcams, went through all of these links, found that they no longer worked and then developed this conspiracy theory .
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )


