yeah, it gets the conspiracy juices flowing
Thanks for mentioning the thread on CN.
Malcolm: you make it sound as if a significant area had been evacuated. Not true. Another observatory only a mile away is operational und staff still live in the vicinity. Only the campus of the one particular obs is empty. Apparently you can walk there unhindered but nobody lives/works there now.
And the post office is closed, workers transferred to the one in the next town.
I found the list of observatory webcams allegedly taken offline since Sept 6.
"The solar/space cams that were shut down include:
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."
I cross-checked them, most I couldn't find a link to or login credentials were required. The one in
Hawaii has been offline since January according to archive.org waybackmachine.
The webcam thing was a detail that didn't fit my favoured theory (spies, White Sand military testing area) and now I can disregard the webcam thing as troll trash.
The coin operated scope, if it exists, is unimportant to the spy story.