Indian army 'mistook Jupiter and Venus for Chinese spy drones'

Oops, our bad

India's army reportedly spent six months watching "Chinese spy drones" violating its air space, only to find out they were actually Jupiter and Venus. Tensions have been high in the disputed Himalayan border area between the two nations in recent years, with India frequently accusing its neighbor of making incursions onto its territory. Things came to a head during a stand-off in April when Chinese troops were accused of erecting a camp on the Indian side of the de facto boundary known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). By that stage, Indian troops had documented 329 sightings of unidentified objects over a lake in the border region.

Requested by the army, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, deputed two astronomers to Ladakh  to resolve the mystery of the two objects. The astronomers were told that the first object, viewed from a location about 4,715 meters above sea level near Thakung, appeared in the horizon at about 6pm and remained visible until about 5am. The second object appeared at 4am and faded away at 11am. The sightings emerged amid what defense analysts say are simmering concerns within the Indian Army about cross-border transgressions and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles by the Chinese to look into Indian territory.

“Our task was to determine whether these unidentified objects were celestial or terrestrial,” Tushar Prabhu, a senior astronomer and a member of the IIAP team, said. The IIAP operates the world’s highest telescope at Hanle, Ladakh, about 150km south of the location where the sightings were reported. Army lance naik Sheminderpal Singh, a regular observer at Point 4715, told the astronomers that he had noticed a delay of four minutes in the appearance of one of the objects each consecutive day. Singh also told them that the object seemed to be the brightest light in the sky and always appeared to move with respect to the stars.

The IIAP team told the Indian Army to use a theodolite to record the horizontal angle and vertical elevation of the two objects. Army personnel performed these observations and submitted the data to the IIAP. The astronomers have concluded that the object observed from Point 4715 is Jupiter as the observations coincide with the planet’s diurnal motion and the apparent motion of the object due to the rotation of the Earth. The description of the second unidentified object that appeared early in the morning suggests that it is Venus, which is currently moving behind the Sun and will in the coming months appear as an evening object.