Fire in the SkyS


Satellite

US: Washington State residents could get view of falling satellite


Associated Press
Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:15 UTC
Image
© Unknown
A 6-ton NASA satellite on a collision course with Earth is set to fly over Washington state Friday evening -- if it doesn't fall out of orbit sooner.

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, is expected to pass over Washington state at 9:20 p.m. PT -- on a path that will take it on a northeasterly course from the mouth of the Columbia River and south of Olympia to the Canadian border.

When it passes over, the satellite may be low enough that the atmosphere is heating it, making it brighter in the sky than it would normally appear.

NASA cautioned there was now a slim chance any surviving debris would land in the United States. Earlier this week, NASA said North America would be in the clear.

"It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any certainty," NASA said in a statement.

The Aerospace Corp., which tracks space debris, estimates the strike will happen sometime between about 6 p.m. and 4 a.m. EDT, which would make a huge difference in where the debris might wind up. Those late-night, early morning passes show the satellite flying over parts of the United States.

Any surviving wreckage is expected to be limited to a 500-mile swath.
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Satellite

NASA's falling satellite slows - and now could hit US

Tariq Malik
MSNBC / SPACE.com
Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:08 UTC
Re-entry time frame shifts too, and it may not crash until late Friday or Saturday

A huge, dead satellite tumbling to Earth is falling slower than expected, and may now plummet down somewhere over the United States tonight or early Saturday, despite forecasts that it would miss North America entirely, NASA officials now say.

The 6 1/2-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) was expected to fall to Earth sometime Friday afternoon, but changes in the school bus-size satellite's motion may push it to early Saturday, according to NASA's latest observations of the spacecraft.

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Satellite

UARS Debris Tracker To Provide 2-Hr Warning For Populated Areas

Mark Dunphy
Irish Weather Online
Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:44 UTC
Image
© UnknownNASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS)
A debris tracker will be able to provide a two-hour warning should debris from an out-of-control U.S. satellite crash in populated areas, Chinese experts said on Friday.

NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere on late Friday afternoon or early Friday evening, almost six years after the end of its productive scientific life. Although the spacecraft will break into pieces during re-entry, not all of it will burn up in the atmosphere.

As of early Friday morning, the orbit of UARS was 110 miles by 115 miles (175 kilometers by 185 kilometers), and re-entry could happen sometime Friday afternoon or early Friday evening U.S. time. While NASA has ruled out an impact in North America, it remains unknown where the debris will fall.

Pang Zhihao, a researcher from the Chinese Research Institute of Space Technology, told China's state-run Xinhua news agency on Friday that the debris will most likely fall into the ocean or an uninhabited area. Nonetheless, a debris tracker will be able to give a fairly accurate prediction where debris will fall about two hours before it hits Earth, giving any residents some time to evacuate.
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Meteor

The Curious Case of Comet Elenin: A Skywatching Tale

Geoff Gaherty
Starry Night Education / Space.com
Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:52 UTC
Comet Elenin
© Michael MattiazzoAmateur astronomer Michael Mattiazzo of Castlemaine, Australia caught these two images of comet Elenin on Aug. 19 (left) and Sept. 6, 2011. The images show a rapid dimming in the comet, possibly hinting at its disintegration.

Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin had the good fortune to discover a comet on Dec. 10, 2010, and it's turned out to be quite a skywatching curiosity.

Initially, comet Elenin received quite a bit of attention from astronomers because its orbit would take it quite close to Earth, within 22 million miles (35 million kilometers), on Oct. 16, 2011. It looked like it was going to put on a good show.

Even as recently as Aug. 19, the comet was brighter than predicted, as observed and photographed by amateur astronomers in Australia, notably Michael Mattiazzo.

Then, disaster struck in the form of a coronal mass ejection from the sun. The next day the comet had dropped half a magnitude in brightness, and has continued to drop, despite the icy body getting closer to the sun. Apparently the comet is disintegrating, as sometimes happens when comets pass too close to the sun.

Meanwhile, this rather small and ordinary comet has become the subject of media frenzy among conspiracy theorists and 2012 doomsayers. Comet Elenin has been accused of being a brown dwarf or the mysterious and destructive planet "Nibiru," and has been blamed for earthquakes and tsunamis. Did you know that its discoverer's name is really an acronym for "Extinction Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh."

On Sept. 10 the comet passed its perihelion, a phase marking its closest approach to the sun, at a distance of 44,840,000 miles (72,170,000 km).
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Meteor

Meteor Caught on Video by Troy Stone

Dianne Castaneda
Universe Today
Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:20 UTC


One of our valued readers here in Universe Today sent us a link to a video that was first featured in a local news channel in Florida. It was a video of a bright green fireball shooting across the sky in Orlando, Florida. The video was recorded by Troy Stone using a dash cam as he was on his way to work in the morning of September 5, 2011.

According to the locals who were able to post the sighting online, the meteor was heading east to west when looking south.
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Sun

Solar Dynamics Observatory records an X1.4 Solar Flare and a Coronal Mass Ejection


Science@NASA
Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:57 UTC
This X1.4 class flare was recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on the morning of September 22, 2011, peaking at 7:01 AM ET. The movie is shown in multiple wavelengths of light simultaneously (211, 193, 171 angstrom). Across the top is a graph of the x-ray intensity during flare as recorded by the GOES spacecraft.


A large coronal mass ejection (CME) shot off the West (right) side of the sun at 6:24 PM ET on September 21, 2011. The CME is moving away from Earth at about 900 miles per second.

The next morning, an X1.4 class flare erupted from the other side of the sun, peaking at 7:01 AM ET on September 22. The flare came from sunspot N15E88, which is just moving into view as the sun rotates. This flare has caused elevated proton levels on the East (left) side of the sun. Associated with this flare, there was a significant CME, traveling at over 600 miles per second, that began around 7:24 AM ET.
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Meteor

US: Fireball seen over Western Oregon

Michael Rollins
NWCN
Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:23 UTC
Image
© heagle 2052
A fireball streaked across the Oregon sky Wednesday evening.

Described as blue or green with a small tail, the object appeared shortly after 8 p.m. Reports of the sighting ran from Portland to Southern Oregon but seemed to be focused on the Central Willamette Valley and Central Oregon Coast.

Candace wrote on the KGW TV Facebook page that "my daughter and I saw it. We were driving from Canby to Aurora and were near the intersection of 99E and Barlow Rd. I hit the brakes because it looked like it was going to land in the road in front of the car, but disappeared off to the side of the road. It looked like one steak from a light green firework coming down from the sky."
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Sun

Above the Aurora: An Amazing Space Fly-Over


Space Weather
Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:11 UTC
Solar activity is picking up, and no one has a better view of its effect on Earth than the crew of the International Space Station. During a geomagnetic storm on Sept. 17th, astronauts recorded a must-see movie of auroras dancing underfoot:


Note how the underbelly of the space station glows green from the reflected light of the auroras below. Also, in the distance, Sirius the dog star and Orion the Hunter can be seen rising feet-first into the night sky.

The storm, which registered a moderate 6 on the 0-to-9 K-index scale of geomagnetic disturbances, was caused by a coronal mass ejection (CME) hitting Earth's magnetic field. It was just a glancing blow, but with CMEs that is often enough to spark bright auroras over both ends of Earth. The space station was flying over the southern hemisphere at the time of the display. Observers in the northern hemisphere saw it too.
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Satellite

UARS Satellite Continued


Space Weather
Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:18 UTC
NASA's UARS satellite is making its final orbits around Earth, tumbling and flashing brightly as it descends toward a Sept. 23rd re-entry. Amateur astronomer Jim Saueressig II caught the bus-sized satellite flying over Burlington, Kansas, on Sept. 20th (image). "It was easily visible in spite of the moonlight and the twilight of the sunrise. The tumble and associated flares were very apparent," he says.

Satellite tracking expert Ted Molczan has used USSTRATCOM's orbital elements of UARS to predict a decay time "late on Sep 23, roughly between 18:00 and 22:00 UTC." Click on the map to view ground tracks corresponding to this interval:

UARS Satelite
© NASA
"There is still potential for the estimated time of decay to shift somewhat before it begins to narrow down," cautions Molczan.
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Meteor

Falling NASA Satellite Could Spark Stunning Light Show

Joe Rao
SPACE.com
Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:17 UTC
A NASA satellite the size of a school bus is just days away from taking a fiery plunge into Earth's atmosphere and could set off a dazzling display when it does ... if anyone is able to see it.

NASA's 6 ½-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is due to fall somewhere on Earth Friday (Sept. 23), though exactly where and when remains a mystery.


If you happened to be lucky enough to be within viewing range of a satellite that is re-entering the atmosphere, the sight, put simply, would amount to a short-lived but spectacular fireworks display. Unlike a fireball meteor, whose flight across the sky might take no more than a few seconds, a re-entering satellite's path usually lasts much longer.
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