Curtis Peebles is an aerospace

Aerospace

Aerospace comprises the atmosphere of Earth and surrounding space. Typically the term is used to refer to the industry that researches, designs, manufactures, operates, and maintains vehicles moving through air and space...

 historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 for the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

 and the author of several books dealing with aviation

Aviation

Aviation is the design, development, production, operation, and use of aircraft, especially heavier-than-air aircraft. Aviation is derived from avis, the Latin word for bird.-History:...

 and aerial phenomena.

He is probably best known as a leading skeptic of UFO sightings and incidents, and he has been a talking head

Talking head

Talking head may refer to:Computers and internet*Computer facial animation, area of computer graphics that animates images of the human head and face*Interactive online charactersFilm and television*Talking Head , 1992 film by Mamoru Oshii...

 in several documentaries dealing with UFOs. He has appeared in the A&E Network

A&E Network

The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...

's 1997 documentary "Where Are All the UFOs?", and on the History Channel documentaries "Unsolved History: Area 51" and "Roswell: The Final Declassification". In his 1994 book Watch the Skies!, a critical history of the UFO phenomenon, Peebles writes that: "I am a skeptic. I believe flying saucer

Flying saucer

A flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...

 reports are misinterpretations of conventional objects, phenomena, and experiences. I do not believe the evidence indicates the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 is under massive surveillance by disk-shaped alien spaceships." However, Peebles also writes that "these [UFO] conclusions are those of the author; readers [of this book] are encouraged to make up their own minds."

In addition to his UFO research, he has also written numerous books and magazine articles dealing with declassified (formerly secret) Air Force secret weapons projects, and he is a frequent lecturer at conferences and symposiums on aviation history.

Books by Peebles

• Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, 1994. Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 1-56098-343-4
• Asteroid
  Asteroid
  Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
  
  s: a History, 2001, Smithsonian Institution Press, ISBN 1-56098-982-3 (or 2000, ISBN 1-56098-389-2).
• Twilight Warriors: Covert Air Operations Against the USSR, 2005, Naval Institute Press, ISBN 1-59114-660-7
• The Moby Dick Project: Reconnaissance Balloons over Russia, 1991, Smithsonian Books, ISBN 1-56098-025-7
• Dark Eagles: A History of Top Secret U.S. Aircraft Programs, 1997. ISBN 0-89141-623-4
• Shadow Flights ISBN 0-89141-700-1
• Guardians: Strategic Reconnaissance Satellites ISBN 0-89141-284-0
• Battle for Space ISBN 0-8253-0160-2
• High Frontier: The U.S. Air Force and the Military Space Program, 1997. ISBN 0-16-048945-8
• The Corona
  Corona (satellite)
  The Corona program was a series of American strategic reconnaissance satellites produced and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the U.S. Air Force...
  
  Project: America's First Spy Satellites, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-688-4.
• Flying Without Wings: NASA Lifting Bodies and the Birth of the Space Shuttle (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight) (with Milton O. Thompson), 1999 ISBN 0-947554-78

External links

• http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/X-Press/stories/103101/ppl_gorn.txt.html