APOD: Rocket Trails in the Milky Way (2012 Mar 29)

[APOD Robot]

Rocket Trails in the Milky Way

Explanation: On March 27, five sounding rockets leapt into early morning skies from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Part of the Anomalous Transport Rocket EXperiment (ATREX), begining at 4:58 am EDT the rockets launched consecutively at 80 second intervals. Releasing a chemical tracer they created luminous white clouds within Earth's ionosphere at altitudes above 60 to 65 miles, swept along by the poorly understood high-altitude jet stream. (Not the same jet stream that airliners fly through at altitudes of 5 to 6 miles.) Seen along the mid-atlantic region of the United States, the clouds drifted through starry skies, captured in this clear photograph from East Point, New Jersey. Looking south toward the launch site, the tantalizing celestial background includes the stars of Sagittarius, Scorpius, and the more permanent faint, white, luminous clouds of the Milky Way.

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[neufer]

[bystander]

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28127
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=28129

[Beyond]

This one, i actually got to see. mumble, mumble, mumble, 5-O'clock in the morning! mumble, mumble

[Ann]

<giggle>

Ann

[Indigo_Sunrise]

I was able to see these trails - very ghostly!
What was most impressive to me is how the chemicals that were used seemed to appear (begin to glow/reflect) from out of nowhere. One minute I was looking at a dark sky, and the next these 'clouds' just kinda showed up. Faded into view, is about the best way I can describe it. Then the chemical clouds got wider and spread out as the winds blew them around!

So far beyond cool, it was smokin'!


Awesome APOD!!!!

[moconnor]

I am always disappointed when I hear about these things on the news AFTER they've happened.

Is there a website that I can visit that would alert me to upcoming cool spaces happenings, such as this one?

[Indigo_Sunrise]

I am always disappointed when I hear about these things on the news AFTER they've happened.

Is there a website that I can visit that would alert me to upcoming cool spaces happenings, such as this one?

SpaceWeather & Space.com are two sites that I look at frequently for space/sky happenings.
*But I had also heard about the rocket launches from my local news radio station, since we were in a good area for viewing.

Of course you could check in here also, as sometimes things like this are discussed on the boards.

Happy skywatching!

[eltodesukane]

Never forgot this one (went to the post office to mail a package, came back home to this):
http://i43.tinypic.com/29w4h2u.jpg

http://i42.tinypic.com/nltrt4.jpg

[Joe Stieber]

I am always disappointed when I hear about these things on the news AFTER they've happened. Is there a website that I can visit that would alert me to upcoming cool spaces happenings, such as this one?

You could also keep an eye on the Wallops web site: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/home/index.html

I live in the southern New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia and have seen a number of launches out of Wallops, often travelling to East Point as we did for this launch, to get a better view (it's closer to Wallops and has a sea horizon, but in particular for the ATREX mission, dark skies). Interestingly, East Point now has two APODs this year; the other was on January 8th: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120108.html

In the early summer of 2012, they're scheduled to launch an Antares rocket from Wallops. This is not a small sounding rocket, but a fairly big rocket that will ultimately be delivering the Cygnus supply module to the ISS: http://www.orbital.com/Antares/ Should be interesting!

On the day of the launch, we keep an eye on the Wallops Launch Webcast for the latest updates (the countdown, delays and/or scrubs): http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/webcast/

There's also a telephone hotline listed on the main site which provides recoreded updates through the countdown. At East Point on Tueday morning, Jerry was using a smartphone to check the webcast page while Ray and I were periodically checking the hotline on our cell phones. Our hearts sank at 4 am EDT when they announced a hold due to a boat in the security zone, but we hung in (the launch on the previous Friday morning was scrubbed due to an errant boat).

Finally, launching commenced at 4:58 am, a mere 2 minutes before the end of the morning's window. After three hours of waiting in the cold and wind, the ascending rockets themselves were somewhat disappointing. However, when the clouds started to appear about 10 minutes later, it was simply awesome and incredible. Far more spectacular than we had expected. It was worth the trips and the wait -- probably one of my more memorable nights watching the sky.

P.S. -- the three-hour wait wasn't a waste of time; I brought my scope along.

[orin stepanek]

Pretty windy up there! (200 to 250 milew per hour.)

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Searcher41]

I had several nights of disapointment before this launch ( Finally ) occured. We all had great luck with this one due to the very good visibility. The rocket plumes from boost phase were not so impressive from Richmond VA but boy did the chemical releases make up for it. I got a lot of very good images and took a bunch for a sequence. I tried to get Youtube to go to the 720 resolution but could only get to 480. I will say the actuall 1000 pix animated GIF file that comes in at 25+ mb is a good bit more enjoyable but this shows over 11 minuets of the show that we all enjoyed.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Just someone please let me know if the link works as this is my first time trying to post on Youtube. By the way it is actually my daughters account!

[neufer]

Just someone please let me know if the link works as this is my first time trying to post on Youtube.

It looks good to me, Searcher41. Thanks.

[Searcher41]

Thanks for letting me know it was a good link. Gnad you liked it too.