First, the 33rd Carnival of Space is up at Fraser’s place, so check it out.
Also, a mystery unfolded earlier this week: several readers emailed me saying they saw a comet-like object high overhead on Monday night. There was speculation that Comet Holmes might be in outburst again… but now it looks like it was a fuel dump by a rocket booster.
If you see something like that, a good place to go is the BAUT forum and report it. Other astroenthusiasts can then try to confirm the sighting.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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December 14th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
The United States Air Force: we’re in ur skys makin ur cometz.
I get to make two USAF posts in one day, hee.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Back in the early ’80’s, I was riding my bike home from my girlfriends house at about 2 AM. It was a very dark, long and lonely stretch of highway, and all of a sudden everything lit up. I looked up, and saw a huge fireball with an object that appeared to be tumbling. My first thought was, “Pedal faster! Don’t let them get you!” The next morning I called the RCMP, feeling rather like an idiot, I asked if anyone else had seen the object. The lady said, “Yes, we had over a dozen calls. We checked and discovered that it was a Russian booster rocket burning up in the atmosphere.” Interesting what we see and how our mind can interpret it.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
I think I got a call about this at my planetarium. This week, a lady was talking about how pretty the comet was, that she’d seen the night before. I could tell from talking to her that she wasn’t an experienced stargazer, and I wondered how she had found it (it’s gotten much dimmer lately; we don’t even tell visitors about it anymore).
I wish I’d gotten her number.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Got some pictures of the fuel dump which were featured on SpaceWeather. You can also see them on my blog: http://www.theschierers.net/blog/astronomy/ufo-spotted-probably-a-satellite/
The UFO bit is sort-of a joke, but then I use the acronym literally, not in the visitors from other worlds sense.
Fuel dumps from the boosters happen all the time, but I’ve had some difficulty finding out exactly why. Obviously carrying excess fuel must be a pretty expensive proposition if you’re just going to dump it. Is this a reliability feature (i.e. extra fuel in case the motors are putting out low thrust and you have to burn a bit longer)? Or an attempt to mask the insertion (by altering the mass of the body before a burn)? The latter seems unlikely because it’s so easy to track satellites by radar.
December 14th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Phil, I just wanted to say, while I didn’t see this “comet,” on the way home last night, I did see a meteor last night. Very bright and fast, it covered probably a good 10-15° in about half a second. From my point of view, it was overhead as I was driving east by northeast, and streaked down toward the horizon in front of me. It was startling enough to make me let off the gas and almost hit the brake before I realized what it was. It was far too cold to go watch the Geminids, but I got to see at least the one.