The 128th Carnival of Space is online at AARTScope blog. It even comes with a quiz to see how well you scored on participating in the IYA 2009. My score? Astronomical.
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About Bad Astronomy
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's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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November 10th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Phil,
Just caught a major flaming fireball over Longmont (I live in the SE corner of town — Pike & Airport Roads). Maybe wasn’t astronomical, but saw two flaming pieces, separated by 5 – 10º in the sky, at roughly 30-40º altitude and roughly NNE (region between Polaris, Errai, and 50 Cas). Was moving very slowly. Piece to east (nearer 50 Cas) was plummetting straight down, piece closer to West was moving slowly (way off in the distance?) and remained burning for at least 20 seconds). Got my iPhone out to snap a photo, but couldn’t get it into movie mode quickly enough (one handed with stuff from work in the other hand).
Don’t know where to go on the ‘net to report or look for reports. Thought of you first, since you’re a neighbor.
~Neal
November 10th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I wonder if the increase in fireball and meteor sightings will be attributed to “Global Warming”?
November 10th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I’m separated from my wife right now. She caught it as well. She claims that she saw something shoot up then split into many pieces then those pieces drifted back down to the earth. Some factual corrections to my original post: I went back outside to see which background stars it was in, and it was in the “bright” triangle of Camelopardalis, at just about 25 Alt and 25 Azimuth from where I live (the south West corner of Longmont, not SE as I said before). Crazy.
Oh, and someone caught this YouTube video (which I’m sure puts this reply in for approval):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD1PL8ruvEo
From the comments (they were north of town) and from my/my wife’s vantage points it’s seeming like this thing fell right over Longmont, so within a couple of miles from where I live. Really crazy. I’ll come back with a link to anything else I find (tomorrow’s local paper seems likely).
November 10th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Actually from one of the YouTube comments, someone guessed the folks who skydived into Invesco Field for the football game. That happened around 6pm the evening PRIOR, and down in Denver (30+ miles away, in the opposite direction from my vantage point).
http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=126677
What I saw was NOT the space station, but they moved like it could’ve been skydivers trailing pyrotechnics. And it seemed to occur in the direction of the local airport, which is very active with skydivers when it’s not dark out.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
CASE CLOSED:
It *was* skydivers, showing off for local media (repeating what they did the night before in Denver):
http://www.timescall.com/news_story.asp?ID=19188
WHEW!
November 11th, 2009 at 7:29 am
No, Neal, the obvious answer is alien spacecraft descending to abduct rednecks and farm animals. :-p
You know that’s how it will be interpreted by some people, and the news people are just part of the cover-up.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Silly Bruce. Putting the cart before the horse.
Fireball are the cause of global warming! It’s right there in the name!
And the increase in fireballs is due to the extra galactic cosmic rays knocking the rocks out of their paths.
Case closed! Now go burn some coal.
(Dear denialists, can I have my cheque now, please?)