Three Harvard astronomers last night told a national TV audience that the rash of sightings of unidentified flying objects are optical illusions and religious mysticism.

Carl E. Sagan, Donald H. Menzel, and Richard E. McCrosky appeared on a CBS entitled UFO: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy, and they all emphasized the fantasy.

Sagan, assistant professor of Astronomy, said that an occasional visit from a far-off world is conceivable, but not the three or four a day that have been claimed. "It is as if all the anthropologists in the United States converged on the Andaman Islands at the same time because (the natives) just discovered the fish net."

He believes the contactees (those who claim to have actual contact with beings from outer space) are actually creating a new theology. "These extraterrestial visitors are benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, and wear white robes. It seems I've seen them somewhere else.... Flying saucer myths are a clever compromise" between traditional theology and science.

Mirage?

McCrosky, lecturer on Astronomy, showed the television audience the equipment of the Smithsonian Institute which photographs the sky all night long every night. With cameras that can detect a six inch sphere as far away as the moon, they have never detected "anything we don't understand."

CBS presented the other side of the case too: one man who claims he was in a flying saucer said the inside is lined with mother-of-pearl plastic, "like we put on toilet seats."