INTRODUCTION

Billy Meier’s Great Journey in space described in Contact Report 31, took place between July 17-22, 1975. Meier boarded the Great Spacer, the mother ship of the Plejaren and after visiting some planets and taking photographs, our Solar system was left behind. The ship is allegedly capable of making ‘hyper-leaps’ or hyperspace jumps, jumping from one place in the universe to another in an instant, and Meier was taken to different places in the Galaxy. As described in Contact Report 31, Meier was also taken relatively close to the Horsehead Nebula:

Ptaah:
121. In a few seconds we will start the next leap.

(Billy: I only half hear his words, because my thoughts are elsewhere. Automatically I put my focus on myself and wonder about the fact that I suddenly can’t see my body. Once again this takes only seconds, which I can verify by looking at my watch. And now I wonder about Ptaah’s words. He has captured my thoughts, and he knows exactly what I think. Apparently, I just let them run free and uncontrolled. But with my watch it’s also strange; when close to Semjase’s beamship, the watch always went too fast or too slow. For some time now that is no longer the case, and it works perfectly. But I haven’t yet…)

Ptaah:
122. We have reached our next goal, which is 1810 light years away from Earth.
123. You call the strange looking formation there, far out in space and 200 light years away, the Horsehead Nebula.

The above excerpts are from the English translation of first block the 3rd edition contact notes, Plejadisch-plejarische Kontakberichte Block 1, published in 2002. In the Semjase Blocks 1st edition there is no distance between the Great Spacer and the Horsehead Nebula mentioned at all. In the Semjase Blocks 2nd edition, the distance was given as 2 million ly, which was obviously a typo since this would be a location outside the Milky Way galaxy (the Milky Way diameter is 100,000-120,000 ly; the distance from Earth to the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million ly). This error was initially also printed in the 3rd edition contact notes, but this was corrected to 200 ly in a corrigendum.

Messages from the Pleiades, 2nd ed. Vol 2, pg. 367, 2005 / UET-WS Vol 4, pg. 366, 1979-1980’s:

Ptaah:
117. We are at the next aim, 1810 light years in distance from the earth.
118. You call this strange appearing for you picture there far away the Horsehead-fog.

Semjase Kontakt Berichte, 2nd ed. Block 2, pg. 271, 1987:

Ptaah
122. We have reached our next goal, which is 1810 light years away from Earth.
123. You call the strange looking formation there, far out in space and 2 million light years away, the Horsehead Nebula.

For our investigation and analysis, we will consider the value of 200 ly from the recent 3rd edition contact notes. For a history of publications on Meier’s Horsehead Nebula picture, visit the following page:

Timeline of Horsehead Nebula picture

INVESTIGATION & ANALYSIS

The below picture of the Horsehead Nebula which Meier allegedly photographed during his Great Journey was published on page 256 of Plejadisch-plejarische Kontaktberichte Block 1. This picture is supposedly part of the collection of 42 space photos – of which around 2001 it ‘was strictly ensured, with the help of Ptaah, that it only concerned “Billy’s” genuine pictures or his pictures that were only slightly falsified’. The Horsehead Nebula can be seen a little right from the middle, but it is hardly recognizable as a horse head in Meier’s picture:

Criticism

K. Locher

In Stimme der Wassermannzeit Nr. 6, January 1976 the following letter (original version here) was published on page 2 which Meier received from K. Locher, physicist from the Schweizerische Astronomische Gesellschaft (Swiss Astronomical Society) or SAG:

Dear Mr. Meier,

As a long time board member of our society, I feel obliged to promote the scientific interest for astronomy in Switzerland. While I explicitly respect the ethical objectives of your community, I would politely like to advise you to look for a more honest compromise between ethics and scientific integrity which becomes apparent from some of the photomontages that you have privately brought into circulation.

For the purpose of psychological protection of affected third parties, I would like to refrain from telling you the way we came to see those images for the time being. Until further notice, I promise you my own confidentiality, as I haven’t informed anyone but the 3 below mentioned recipients with copies and asked those 3 also to remain confidential. Astronomically it is easy to prove for at least 2 of your images (Pleiades and Horsehead Nebula) that the accompanying caption is not true when it says that they were taken close or relatively close by UFOnauts. You particularly forgot to retouch the foreground stars, which according to your version should have been on the side or behind the photographing UFOnauts.

Also consider legally, that with your private montages you infringe a copyright, if this as I suspected belongs to our society. – About all this, I am only willing to have a possible telephonic conversation, if you first respond in writing.

Best regards
K. Locher

Copies to
Dr.h.c.H.Rohr, Bilderdienst SAG
Dr.P.Wild, Astronomisches Institut Bern
R.Germann, Sektion Zürcher Oberland SAG

In this letter, K. Locher suggest that if the photograph was really taken by Meier from a relatively short distance away (200 ly?) from the Horsehead Nebula, as was mentioned in the caption of the photograph, then the picture should be very different. The foreground stars should not be visible at all in the photograph since these stars should be either to the side or behind the photographing position (Great Spacer).

Locher’s letter was answered by Meier with a 4 page ‘open letter’ to Locher in the same issue. In his response, Meier seemed quite upset that Locher implicitly accused him of forgery, as in his long and fiery reply he accuses Locher of not being objective, scientific and calls him a disgrace for the Swiss Astronomical Society. However in these 4 pages, Meier doesn’t at all respond to the specific criticism on the pictures of the Horsehead Nebula and the Pleiades star cluster, which he allegedly photographed during his space journey.

MUFON

The same reasons which were highlighted by the Swiss physicist Locher above, were also being pointed out by the Swiss Meier case investigators to the MUFON, who then published it in their – The MUFON UFO Journal No. 150 (1980) under the title of the article, ‘New View of Pleiades’ by Richard Hall.

Kal K. Korff

In Kal Korff’s 1995 book – Spaceships from the Pleiades – he analysed the picture, which he got from ex-FIGU member Hans Jacob’s photo-binder. His 4 points of criticism are:

1. The picture is out of focus which it should not be, since the Horsehead Nebula is more than 30-50 feet away it should be in focus considering the reported optical characteristics of Meier’s camera
2. Meier claims he flew within a few thousand kilometers; the Horsehead Nebula would be indistinguishable from that distance since it is several light years across
3. Meier’s photo is an Earth-based astronomy photo taken from a large telescope, the background stars and other points of comparison prove this
4. Meier shot his image from a monitor, as the curvature of the screen on the right side of his picture proves

As for point 1, this would be true if Meier would have made the pictures through a glass-type window, but Korff ignored the fact that Meier claims to have taken at least some of his outer space pictures from a special apparatus that the Plejaren constructed for him.

Regarding point 2, for his “a few thousand kilometers” source, Korff cited an anonymous person who was an associate of Hans Jacob with whom Korff corresponded on May 24 and June 23, 1980. However, the contact report states that Meier and the Plejaren are at a position 1,810 light years from Earth and 200 light years from the Horsehead Nebula, not a few thousand kilometers away.

Regarding point 4, note that the picture in PPKB 1 is cropped on all sides except the left side, when compared with the picture in Korff’s book. It is interesting to note that the image in Korff’s book is apparently cropped on the left side, when compared with the picture in PPKB 1. Perhaps Korff got a different version of the same picture from Hans Jacob. What is even more interesting is that in the new picture published in PPKB 1, the curvature that resembles the curvature of a TV or other device’ screen as shown in Korff’s picture, has been cropped. Regarding this issue, Wendelle Stevens seems to have suggested that these curved edges were cropped (reasons not mentioned) at Meier’s end to make them disappear from the image. See the 3-part investigation on Apollo-Soyuz et al. pictures for more information on this ‘curved-edges’ topic (search for the word ‘curve’).

Regarding point 3, if we imagine a sphere with a radius of 1,810 ly with Earth in the center, and another sphere with a radius of 200 ly with the Horsehead Nebula in the center which would be on a position where these two spheres intersect as illustrated below. According to Earth astronomy, the Horsehead Nebula is about 1,600 ly away from Earth (though other websites state that the distance as 1500 ly, for our analysis we will consider the maximum distance value). This means the position of Meier and the Plejaren should have been somewhere at the far side of the Horsehead Nebula, as illustrated in this picture (green arrow):

Obviously, the viewing direction, which would have been roughly in the direction of the blue arrow, and the close distance to the Nebula would result in a completely different picture with different (background) stars, nebulae, etc. compared to a picture taken from Earth towards the Horsehead Nebula.

Is Meier’s picture indeed completely different compared to pictures of the Horsehead Nebula taken from Earth? Below is a comparison between Meier’s picture and a picture of the Horsehead Nebula taken through a telescope (March 21, 2005, Ryan Steinberg and Family/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF). Also see this animation for a better comparison.

As can be seen, all the stars and nebulae are practically at the same position in both pictures. The big bright star on the left is Alnitak, the distance of which is mostly given as about 800 ly, although the Wikipedia page gives a distance of almost 1,300 ly. Either way, the distance between the Horse Head Nebula and Alnitak is more then 200 ly, so it should not appear on Meier’s photograph as already mentioned by K. Locher. Clearly, both pictures are taken from the same location in the Milky Way galaxy: Earth.

However, as Jeroen Jansen, a Meier case supporter from Holland cites the following excerpt from page 338 of Wendelle Steven’s Message from the Pleiades Vol. 1 in his rebuttal of Korff’s response on space pictures:

“The disappointment was crushing, and Meier forced to resort to collecting other images to illustrate what he was trying to describe to others, including observatory pictures of some of the stellar wonders. Some of these became mounted in the picture album by his friends, and eventually became confused by others as the pictures from the trip. In fact that was what we were told once by somebody there also, which we knew was not true, because those observatory views are only possible from the point in space occupied by the Earth, and through special hydrogen and other filters not available for small cameras. Eduard Meier has never told us that those pictures were taken on that extended trip.”

Wendelle didn’t cite the source of the above information which states that Meier was forced to resort to collecting earth-based observatory pictures to illustrate to people what he saw and photographed during his space journey. Nor were we able to find any such information published by Meier/FIGU. Also Wendelle didn’t point out what space pictures he was referring to.

Let us for a moment assume Wendelle’s information is true and also applies to the Horsehead Nebula picture of Meier’. Since the Horsehead Nebula has been recorded since the year 1888, there were already abundant sources in 1975 from which the Meier picture could have been taken. Could it be that this picture is one of those stellar Earth-based observatory pictures that were used to illustrate Meier’s journey, and eventually were confused by 0thers as actual pictures from his trip?

In PPKB 1, the picture has no caption that states it is an Earth based picture just for illustration, so naturally one would assume this to be a picture taken by Meier, just as the other pictures in PPKB 1 and 2. Also the quality of the picture is just as bad as all the other space pictures, which seems to indicate it was taken by the same Olympus 35 ECR camera as the other pictures. If the picture was only for illustration, why not choose a better quality picture? Furthermore, FIGU Special Bulletin 20 clearly stated that the pictures in PPKB 1 and 2 are genuine or almost genuine pictures:

“For the publication in the Contact Report Block, it was strictly ensured, with the help of Ptaah, that it only concerned “Billy’s” genuine pictures or his pictures that were only slightly falsified by Schmid, whereby the aforesaid falsification, for a logical reason, found no use.”

All of the above reasons indicate that the Horsehead Nebula picture is considered as a genuine picture photographed by Meier during his space journey and not an Earth-based observatory picture.

Meier/FIGU were aware of Korff’s 1995 book and they even published a rebuttal article – The untruths and dubious intentions of Kal K. Korff – on their website, in which they claim that they can “find almost on every page lies and exaggerations, etc.” (page 1). However, except for the rebuttal on the Ring Nebula picture, for some reason they completely ignored many valid and strong counter-arguments and counter-evidence presented by Korff regarding 8 other space pictures, including the Horsehead Nebula. On April 1996 an article – The Meier controversy – New accusations – was published by Swiss journalist Luc Bürgin in UFO-Kurier Nr. 18, in which Bürgin cited arguments from Korff’s book and also the opinion of a scientist who stated the following:

“The picture is identical to a picture from one of my astronomy books, including all stars in the foreground. Apart from that Meier could never have made any pictures of gas nebulae with his simple camera, since they shine far too faint. Nearby they are far too thin, to be visible anyway. For such pictures to be made from the earth one needs a precise telescope which follows the earth rotation and a long exposure time.”

Even though Meier/FIGU were aware of this article, in their August 1996 rebuttal (by Michael Hesemann) we find no mention of the Horsehead Nebula picture and other similarly dubious evidence that has been adressed by Bürgin or Korff.

CONCLUSION

We investigated a picture of the Horsehead Nebula which Meier allegedly photographed during his Great Journey, of which it is suggested that it is part of a collection of 42 space pictures that were verified and authenticated by the Plejaren Ptaah as either genuine or only slightly falsified.

When compared to a picture of the Horsehead Nebula taken from Earth, the stars and nebulas and their relative positions are practically identical, which means Meier’s picture is definitely not taken from a position 1,810 ly from Earth and 200 ly from the Horsehead Nebula, as Contact Report 31 implies, but from Earth.

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