Comments on: Carnival, and a mystery solved

By: MandyDax

MandyDax — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:49:57 +0000

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.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:50:09 +0000

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.

By: Theropod

Theropod — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:28:36 +0000

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.

By: Michael Lonergan

Michael Lonergan — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:59:49 +0000

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.

By: The Centipede

The Centipede — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:43:10 +0000

The United States Air Force: we’re in ur skys makin ur cometz.

I get to make two USAF posts in one day, hee.