Comments on: Stardust at home

By: Cortland Richmond

Cortland Richmond — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 20:09:42 +0000

It was visible quite a bit longer than meteors.

Position:
North 38 deg 31.458 minutes
West 122 degrees 32.990 minutes
Altitude 2014 feet

Visible as:
Small red fireball, no visible trail
From 09:57:05Z to 09:57:39

I may have taken my eyes off the sky a moment and started late.

Had a 6X45 camera with 60 mm lens set up pointing pretty much where Polaris would have appeared had the Moon not been so bright, though I’d have done better to use a wider angle lens and smaller film — 24mm on a 35mm camera would have caught the whole thing. And while on the shoulda woudla coulda… I accidentally left the camera at F8. On top of only finding g ASA100 film in the store, I think itâ€™ll take some pushing.

Ad Astra — per Aspirin!

By: Shawn

Shawn — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:51:59 +0000

I just went to the spot in Sacramento, CA where I saw the capsule reentry and did a rough estimate of the degree width of the visible northern sky and it was about 3 fist widths. My fists are hammier than most but we’ll stick with that handy old rule of thumb and say one fist(no thumb) = 10 degrees. It took less than six seconds for the capsule to cross those 30 degrees (4 or 5 seconds was my estimate ((documented on my blog (((http:\\portableplanetarium.blogspot.com))) ))immediately after the event). I wasn’t timing it instrumentally (can I use that here?) so my estimate, of course, may not be completely accurate. But at the rate of speed you estimated it would have taken half a minute to travel those 30 degrees, and I’m 100% certain that it did not take that long.

At your speed estimate it would have taken just under 34 seconds to travel from Polaris to the northern horizon of the park near your house. Or about 25 seconds to fly through Orion. It was moving much faster than that.

It was faster than a satellite but not as fast as a meteor.

BTW. While I find it somewhat too harsh, I do agree with the second sentence of your last paragraph.

By: Jack Hagerty

Jack Hagerty — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 08:28:37 +0000

Oops, I meant the NNE horizon in that previous post.

By: Jack Hagerty

Jack Hagerty — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 01:28:54 +0000

I didn’t do too much prep, but I saw it very easily. I live in Livermore, CA (about 100 miles/160 Km south of the BA) and knew it would become visible at just under 15Â° elevation. I synchronized my watch with WWV and walked out to a large grassy field that’s part of a city park near my house. This is a great place to watch astronomical events since it’s about 1,000 feet (300 m) on a side, so if I want to watch someting to the west, I stand at the eastern edge. In this case, I stood on the southern edge which gave me an unobstructed view of the northern horizon.

I started scanning with earnest at 1:56 (PST) and at about 1:56:40 it popped into view about 15Â° west of north. It was as bright as Venus, only yellow, and was moving (I would guess) about 1Â°/sec. It wasn’t over “in 10 seconds.” My estimate is that it took about 30 seconds from first appearance until it disappeared over the ENE horizon.

It was not a subtle event. Anyone who had their eyes open and looking even vaguely in the right direction should have seen it. The moon was both full and very high. It was so bright that the sky actually had a blue cast once you became dark adapted. If you missed it, you probably timed it wrong. From the BA’s location, it was almost 20Â° above the horizon.

- Jack

By: Billblog » Blog Archive » “I claim this dust mote in the name of…”

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:35:42 +0000

[...] An unprecedented opportunity to contribute to the state of astro-geology is being presented by the University of California at Berkely. You can participate in their stardust@home project to analyze aerogel images for interstellar dust grains that were returned to Earth a few days ago aboard the NASA mission Stardust. [...]

By: Bryn

Bryn — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:03:43 +0000

Waaaay too cloudy and rainy here in Olympia, WA to see it.

By: RAF

RAF — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:23:52 +0000

Don’t “knock your self out” about it, BA. I was VERY lucky to have seen it. I’ve also been wondering how I could have been “surprised” when I was expecting it, and have come up with a few thoughts…

One…like you said, I “should” have been paying attention to the time…it appeared much sooner than I expected.

Two…I was wearing my ball cap (with built-in ear coverings because it was cold) and was looking at the horizon. I didn’t expect it to be so high overhead. (If I had consulted software, I would have been better prepared.)

Three…it was REALLY MOVING FAST!!!

I was “lucky” because I happened to glance up and catch it, after it had already passed “overhead”. I did pre-focus my binoculars (so I wasn’t totally unprepared), so I was able to quickly look at it through them, and got an excellent view for a handfull of seconds.

Going back to number 3…it’s really hard to describe and compare just how FAST it was moving. It was certainly faster than any plane but not “quite” as fast as a meteor/meteoroid. (I know, I know…the object itself is called a meteoroid in space and when it’s in the atmosphere, and the “glow” is called a meteor. ) My “best guess” is that it was moving with the speed of a slow moving bolide.