What did you see in the sky tonight?

[Ann]

At 12.53 in this Youtube video , you can hear a young boy shouting: I can see sky!!! Stars!!![/size]

That was me this morning! I could see sky!!! Stars!!! All the stars at once! And I saw Mars and Regulus!!!

No big deal, you think? That's because you haven't seen our night skies here in southern Sweden in November. We've had a ton of overcast skies! A mile of them! A gigahertz of them! A light-year of them!!!

But this morning I could see sky!!!! Stars!!!

Ann

[orin stepanek]

At 12.53 in this Youtube video , you can hear a young boy shouting: I can see sky!!! Stars!!![/size]

That was me this morning! I could see sky!!! Stars!!! All the stars at once! And I saw Mars and Regulus!!!

No big deal, you think? That's because you haven't seen our night skies here in southern Sweden in November. We've had a ton of overcast skies! A mile of them! A gigahertz of them! A light-year of them!!!

But this morning I could see sky!!!! Stars!!!

Ann

toward morning the sky was dark and overcast! That's allright though; this time of year the clear nights are colder.

[TNT]

And it's supposed to be cloudy tonight! Oh well. So much for stargazing.

On the other hand, I took my first picture of the moon! I wish I could post it here, but it is a bmp image, which apparently is not allowed for some reason. Can anyone help with that?

[owlice]

Use Graphic Converter or another program to change the format. What are you using that gives you bmp files for a photograph?

[geckzilla]

If you don't have anything else you can open it with MS Paint (or do they just call it Paint now?) and save it as a JPG.

[TNT]

I use RegiStax6 image processing software. The image may have become a bitmap image after I saved it via RegiStax6.

[Beyond]

The thing with paint, in my Windows 7, is that you have to save it first, then put the cursor over it to see how big the picture is, then run it back through paint to shrink it for use in Asterisk*, if need be, which is more than likely.

[TNT]

Especially if the picture is 900 kilobytes in size! I wonder if it's even possible for the image to become small enough to post here!

[orin stepanek]

I had to get an image converter; now all my images come jpeg! http://www.shareup.net/Multimedia/Image ... 21575.html

[TNT]

Thanks, everybody!

[Ann]

NIce view of Tycho, TNT!

And here is the guy that the crater got its name from.




Ann

[neufer]

NIce view of Tycho, TNT!

And here is the guy that the crater got its name from.

George S. Patton (George C. Scott): I don't know why,
. but the image of a bullet coming straight for my nose was more horrifying than anything else.

Omar N. Bradley: Well, I can understand that, George, it's such a handsome nose.

[Beyond]

Great Scott Wadda statement A projectile to the snozzola. that's just gotta smart

[Beyond]

Last night just before i went to bed, about 1:00am, i just caught about a good seconds worth of a decent sized green meteor lighting up and passing above a thin layer of clouds. The clouds made it look lighter green and fuzzy. The strange thing about it though, was that it was going north. I don't ever recall seeing a meteor going north before. Now i have to say that I've almost always seen them going in a general westerly direction. Of course that could be because my sky view is pretty well blocked by trees except for a generally westerly view.

[Chris Peterson]

Last night just before i went to bed, about 1:00am, i just caught about a good seconds worth of a decent sized green meteor lighting up and passing above a thin layer of clouds. The clouds made it look lighter green and fuzzy. The strange thing about it though, was that it was going north. I don't ever recall seeing a meteor going north before. Now i have to say that I've almost always seen them going in a general westerly direction. Of course that could be because my sky view is pretty well blocked by trees except for a generally westerly view.

We're seeing Leonid meteors now, but not very many. Leonids, of course, radiate from the constellation Leo, which was low in the east when you saw your meteor. So if you were looking east, you could certainly have seen a Leonid traveling north or south. But if you could only see the western sky, it's doubtful that you saw a Leonid. There are a few other active showers, though, and there are always sporadics.

FWIW, there is no preferential direction for a meteor to travel in. If you can see the whole sky, you'll see meteors traveling in all directions.

[neufer]

Posted on November 17, 2011 by astrobob

[size=150][color=#FF00FF]<= North[/color][/size] This map shows the sky facing east around 3 a.m. tomorrow morning. The moon is very near the Leonid radiant (red dot). Maps by Stellarium

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Last night just before i went to bed, about 1:00am, i just caught about a good seconds worth of a decent sized green meteor lighting up and passing above a thin layer of clouds. The clouds made it look lighter green and fuzzy. The strange thing about it though, was that it was going north. I don't ever recall seeing a meteor going north before. Now i have to say that I've almost always seen them going in a general westerly direction. Of course that could be because my sky view is pretty well blocked by trees except for a generally westerly view.

A Leonid going North wouldn't be a problem.

A sky view is pretty well blocked by trees except for a generally westerly view would, however.

More likely it was a Northern Taurid or:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromedids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Monocerotids

[Beyond]

Going by the old saying from somewhere... Go west young man.... I probably just happen to mostly catch the younger meteors - going west. So i would have to assume that the green one last night was either drunk on space gas, or an older one.

[neufer]

I probably just happen to mostly catch the younger meteors - going west.

So i would have to assume that the green one last night was either drunk on space gas, or an older one.

[b][color=#0000FF]A Han Dynasty silk comet atlas, featuring drawings of comets believed by Victor Clube and Bill Napier to be related to the breakup of Encke's Comet in the past[/color][/b]

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<<The Taurids are an annual meteor shower associated with the comet Encke. They are named after their radiant point in the constellation Taurus, where they are seen to come from in the sky. Because of their occurrence in late October and early November, they are also called Halloween fireballs. During the week ending November 4, 2005, the large number of fireballs seen all over the world led some to suggest UFO visitations. These fireballs may have been space junk or the Taurids.

Encke and the Taurids are believed to be remnants of a much larger comet, which has disintegrated over the past 20,000 to 30,000 years, breaking into several pieces and releasing material by normal cometary activity or perhaps occasionally by close encounters with the gravitational field of Earth or other planets (Whipple, 1940; Klačka, 1999). In total, this stream of matter is the largest in the inner solar system. Due to the stream's size, the Earth takes several weeks to pass through it, causing an extended period of meteor activity, compared with the much smaller periods of activity in other showers. The Taurids are also made up of weightier material, pebbles instead of dust grains. Typically, Taurids appear at a rate of about 7 per hour, moving slowly across the sky at about 27 kilometers per secondr. If large enough, these meteors may become bolides, with spectacular light shows and even audible sound.

Due to the gravitational effect of planets, especially Jupiter, the Taurids have spread out over time, allowing separate segments labeled the Northern Taurids and Southern Taurids to become observable. Essentially these are two cross sections of a single, broad, continuous stream in space. The Beta Taurids, encountered by the Earth in June/July and which many astronomers consider the cause of the Tunguska event, are also a cross section of the stream. Beta Taurids approach from the Earth's daytime side; so cannot be observed visually in the way the (night-time) Northern and Southern Taurids of October/November can.

The Taurid stream has a cycle of activity that peaks roughly every 2500 to 3000 years, when its core passes nearer to Earth and produces more intense showers. In fact, because of the separate "branches" (night-time in one part of the year and daytime in another; and Northern/Southern in each case) there are two (possibly overlapping) peaks separated by a few centuries, every 3000 years. Some astronomers note that dates for megalith structures such as Stonehenge are associated with these peaks. The next peak is expected around 3000 AD.

Some consider the Bronze Age breakup of the originally larger comet to be responsible for ancient destruction in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps evidenced by a large meteor crater in Iraq. However the Bronze Age was c. 6000 years ago and the original break up of the parent comet, as mentioned above, occurred long before that. Ancient peoples may have been used to Tunguska Class impacts which occur approximately every 300 years as calculated by Eugene Shoemaker and Krakatoa type eruptions both of which have widespread climatic effects and which would dwarf any climatic effects from the slight increase in upper atmospheric dust caused by bolides due to passing through the tail of Comet Encke.

An impact event was observed by NASA scientist Rob Suggs and astronomer Bill Cooke while testing out a new 10-in telescope and video camera they had assembled to monitor the moon for meteor strikes. After consulting star charts they concluded that the impact body was probably part of the Taurid meteor shower. This may well be the first recording of this type of lunar event which some have claimed to have witnessed in the past.>>

[Ann]

Going by the old saying from somewhere... Go west young man.... I probably just happen to mostly catch the younger meteors - going west. So i would have to assume that the green one last night was either drunk on space gas, or an older one.

A green meteor! Not bad!

Ann

[Beyond]

Going by the old saying from somewhere... Go west young man.... I probably just happen to mostly catch the younger meteors - going west. So i would have to assume that the green one last night was either drunk on space gas, or an older one.

A green meteor! Not bad!

Ann

Most of the single meteors that i have been fortunate enough to see, have been bright white. But i have seen a few green ones. I've also seen a somewhat yellow one turn green, and a very bright white one start turning green before it left the atmosphere. One of the biggest ones I've ever seen was a sort of dingy shade of yellow. Kinda ho-hum and boring, when they're yellow, for some reason. But the only time I've ever seen any kind of meteor shower, was when i was 'coon' hunting with my uncle and someone he knew. When we were done coon hunting, this 'someone' went to get his jeep, while my uncle and i laid down on our backs on the ground to watch a bit of a meteor shower pass by. It was in the fall and the ground was rather cold. After about half an hour, the truck came and we got up. That's when we realized that you shouldn't lay down on cold ground to watch meteors I think we both had stiff backs for the next day. I'd rather see the bigger single ones. The meteor shower ones are rather small. Oh, we did get one 'coon'. The guy had shot at it after the two coon dogs treed it, but missed. The coon fell out of the tree and the two dogs were on it as soon as it hit the ground. One dog was really old and had no teeth. The other dog was young, some kind of terrier mix, and had a LOT of teeth, to say the least. Well, one dog grabbed one end of the coon, and the other dog grabbed the other end of the coon. Try as he might, the younger dog with all the teeth just couldn't pull the coon away from the older dog with no teeth at all. It was a sight to see!! We kinda felt sorry for the coon, but weren't about to get mixed up in the tussle. After a while things setteled down when both the dogs got tired. There wasn't any fight left in the coon, and the guy that owned the dogs dispatched the coon. As it turns out, that was the only time I've ever gone coon hunting. For those who don't know, -coon- is short for Raccoon. What Davy Crockett's coonskin hat was made from. You know, the one with the Raccoon tail hanging down the back, like you see in all the "Frontier" movies.

[Chris Peterson]

A green meteor! Not bad!

Of the thousands of witness reports I've collected over the years, about 3/4 of fireballs are reported as green or green-blue. So actually, not seeing a bright meteor as green is what would be a little more unusual.

[TNT]

I saw a Perseid meteor last summer, and it was bright orange with a brownish trail.

[Chris Peterson]

Going by the old saying from somewhere... Go west young man.... I probably just happen to mostly catch the younger meteors - going west. So i would have to assume that the green one last night was either drunk on space gas, or an older one. :mrgreen:

Here's what I've caught with just one camera in the last week:

S Taurid 14
N Taurid 20
Andromedid 15
Leonid 39
alpha Monocerotid 13
Sporadic 56
Unknown 48

Total meteors: 205

Some of the sporadics must belong to showers, but have calculated radiants with too large an error to be certain. The unknowns have trails shorter than 1°, so there's no reliable way to determine their radiant. These meteors have apparent magnitudes of 2 or brighter. Visually, you'd see a lot more.

[Beyond]

Going by the old saying from somewhere... Go west young man.... I probably just happen to mostly catch the younger meteors - going west. So i would have to assume that the green one last night was either drunk on space gas, or an older one.

Here's what I've caught with just one camera in the last week:

S Taurid 14
N Taurid 20
Andromedid 15
Leonid 39
alpha Monocerotid 13
Sporadic 56
Unknown 48

Total meteors: 205

Some of the sporadics must belong to showers, but have calculated radiants with too large an error to be certain. The unknowns have trails shorter than 1°, so there's no reliable way to determine their radiant. These meteors have apparent magnitudes of 2 or brighter. Visually, you'd see a lot more.

If i lived with my head above the clouds, like you do, I'd see a lot more also. But on the other hand, IF you lived where i do, you'd probably sell most of your cameras

[BMAONE23]

when I looked up tonight i saw

Click to play embedded YouTube video.