Starship Asterisk*

A series of images from HL and MK on 2004 December 17 show an unusual bright object moving across the sky that must be some sort of of satellite. Oddly it might be quite high since there is NOT a lot of parallax between the two sites! The images follow. Since it was seen by both HL and MK, its height should be computable. Could someone search http://heavens-above.com/ to see what this is? Why hasn't the NSL network seen it before?

Here is the view from Haleakala (HL):





And it goes on for several more frames.

Here is the view from Mauna Kea (MK):






- RJN

I checked Heavens-Above and it seems that this objects is not HST or ISS. Such a long Iridium flare was not expected at that night.

A convincing twilight-zone-like story would be the following:
The object is clearly seen at MK/HL moving from west to east. MW and KP turned off exactly when the object showed up so no records of that object were made. CI was covered with moisture for the whole night. However, WO was up and recorded an object making its way from west to east just three hours after it was seen at MK and HL.

The object can be seen in this picture just under perseus.


Few hours later, a bright meteor was reported to be crossing the sky above Jakarta:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4108697.stm


However, it is most likely that the object seen at Wise is a moon artifact (I have seen such before), and the meteor seen in Jakarta has nothing to do with the satelite seen at MK/HL.





A less exotic option is that the object is a french spy satellite that was launched from south america that day.
http://www.news24.com/News24/AnanziArti ... 44,00.html

However, the reported time when the satellite was launched is about two hours after the object was seen.

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What is truly bizarre is that this object is visible for a good 55 minutes at Haleakala and close to 30 minutes at Mauna Kea.

Usually, satellites take a few dozen seconds or, at the most, a couple of minutes to cross the entire sky.

If this object is a satellite, it is either very slow moving or at a very high altitude.
I checked all the possibilities at Heavens-Above and no satellite passes seem to fit this observation.
It is also impossible to be a meteorite.

?!?!?!

sarch

Maybe a piece of space junk just happened to be rotating at the right speed and caught the sun just right?

A recent release from space.com that a "Small Asteroid Passes Between Satellites and Earth "
http://space.com/scienceastronomy/aster ... 41222.html

Tilvi,

Interesting! But that space.com article says that closest approach was December 19, and the above images were on December 17. Now I wonder how bright the December 19th object was -- is it visible on any NSL images?

- RJN

I watched the movie from HL for the 17th and it shows it for a long time. You can follow it all the way to the horizon. and the funny thing is it is fuzzy.....

Also at MK they have it marked with yellow blocks. why is that?

Hi, I'm new in this forum. I'm the french translator of APOD and I saw a link to this forum in the next Tuesday picture.
I would like to have some more informations:
- How many time it has taken to the object to go from an horizon to the other? In the APOD animation, the object is visible from 14:19 to 14:39 and covers only about 1/3 of the sky! It's very slow for a satellite, except for a high orbit one. But high orbite satellite are generally dim.
- At what time does the Sun set on mid-december in Hawaii (please, could you answer me in UT?). I would like to estimate the elevation of the Sun under the horizon. In the animation, the object seems to appear slowly, as it get out of the Earth'shadow. With the exact time of this apparition, it could be possible to estimate the altitude of the object.
- What's the distance between HL and MK?
- Notice: it couldn't be "Wonder Woman" with her aeroplane going to her secret Island (may be near Hawaii) because her plane is transparent (made with a very good multicoated material I think...), and despite her golden clothes, she doesn't have the good albedo. May be she's dead since the time of the TV series.

I think this object could be a meteorologic balloon (stratospheric) wich is relatively slow and, with its huge surface made with a high albedo material, can be very bright.

What do you think about my hypothesis?

I've just made a quick search and discovered that such a ballon was launch on december 16th (http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1016963). But unfortunatly for my hypothesis, it was launched from Antarctica and made some revolution around the South Pole.

I hope my English is good enough to have been well understood

,.

The APOD in question that is still being composed is here:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050208.html

This APOD might be updated and even switched to a different date. But in case any Asteriskians (better than Asteroids?) want to check it out and get in some early thoughts, please do.

Have at it!

- RJN

As I've no access to past observations I don't know if the trail in the pictures - shown by both observatories with little parallax - is typical for a satellite, but if it is, wouldn't its height be computable as originally noted by RJN? A very high altitude would account for the transit time but - again subject to comparison with known such past traces - not for the luminosity.

Separately, isn't NORAD supposed to be informed of such objects? Some time ago there was a scramble with both US and Russian nuclear defenses over an unidentified object in the skies over Greenland until it turned out to be a balloon launched by a metereological station in Denmark. Couldn't you call and ask before posting it as an APOD - and this said, may I congratulate you on the site!

Llaveder may have a solution to the Asteriskians (?) term, if my recollection of a French cartoon character named Asterix is correct. Is Asterixes the plural - assuming that a proper noun has a plural to begin with?

Indeed, Astérix is a cartoon character from a cartoon named "Astérix", see http://www.asterix.tm.fr
But, in french, a proper noun doesn't have any plural.
Astérix comes from the world Astérisque, which comes from the greek "Asterisk" meaning "Little star". So Astérix is a French Star like Keanu Reeves or Georges Clooney in US! In the cartoon Astérix, all the french (called the Gaulois in Middle Ages) characters have name finishing with "ix" and are puns.

It's a secret military satellite.

If the APOD animation is a good indication, the object appears to have slowed down rapidly. It starts off as a thin streak and appears to be coming closer as it's aspect increases, and it suddenly seems to slow down. What do you think?

Has anyone checked the luminosity index of the object? If it's as or nearly as bright as the sun then we have an extremely reflective object. If it were a nearly frictionless surface it might reflect more brightly.

It seems to be at agreat distance from Earth since the length of the streak (recorded over the same length of time one presumes) is much longer and clearer when overhead than when aproaching the horizon where it progressively gets smaller and more diffused. This may indicate a forshortening from our perspective, but would also indicate it's great distance from us. The gradual increase in 'fuzziness' could be explained by the 'piling' on top of one another of the light rays. It may also indicate the length of the object as well (function of time, luminosity & length). It may also indicate a curved surface.

What do you think?

The APOD object reminds of something I saw in the middle of night when I was a child sleeping out under the stars. It took me almost 25 years to figure out was it was. Actually there were 2 warm orange objects each the apparent size of the full moon traveling about the speed of a satillite from the northeast to the southwest, but in 1962 I had not yet seen a satillite pass overhead. The second object appeared about a minute after the first one disappeared over the horizon and was virtually identical to the first one. Each took a couple of minutes to traverse the sky. Turns out they were undoubtedly meteors caught in Earth's orbit that eventually eroded into the upper atmosphere. They were huge, so probably big enough and slow enough to have landed in the ocean since I only lived about 20 miles from the ocean in a remote area of California near the Oregon border. Two years ago I met someone who also saw it who was out driving a Willey's Jeep on top of a mountain about 25 miles south of where I lived. I figure they were about 60 miles up when I saw them.

The APOD object is larger and more diffuse than the one I saw, thus it might be more of a cometary substance that eroded slightlyl as it grazed the upper atmosphere. But it was moving so slowly?? I can't figure how that would be possible.

The object moves at about the same rate as the dark area (clouds?) on the top of the frames in the GIF. It has to be in the atmosphere.

Ben wrote:If the APOD animation is a good indication, the object appears to have slowed down rapidly. It starts off as a thin streak and appears to be coming closer as it's aspect increases, and it suddenly seems to slow down. What do you think?

That's a visual anomaly caused by the fish-eye lens.

BOB-
I BELIEVE THAT THIS IS JUST THE RE-ENTRY of an un-cataloged piece of spacecraft or upper stage that could have been in orbit for many years. It could have been something as small as a large explosive nut or bolt used to tie satellites to an upper stage.

Best Regards, It was good to see you in San Diego. Keep up the good work on APOD.

Jerry Fishman
NASA-MSFC

Ok. Here's an eyewitness account. I had forgotten about this event until I saw the Astro Picture of the Day site earlier this evening.

I live in South Kona on the Big Island. I awoke in the very early AM. The sky was quite clear that AM. As I gazed up towards the zenith, tracking close to Leo was a very large "white blob". Being a frequent star gazer my initial response was "What the f#$# is that"!. I have never seen an object like it before. It's size was approximately twice, maybe a little more, than the Full Moon diameter.

After watching it track very slowly for about 10 minutes, I decided it was worth a look in my telescope. I have a 4" Vernonscope Refractor. Magnification was 20x. The wide field revealed a very soft light - no it was not a weather balloon as others have suggested - with stars visible behind it. Rather than some distinct object it seemed that a light was shining on part of the sky!

Even stranger was what I observed on the southern side of the object. About 3 full moon diameters away was a small dot of pale yellow/white light that looked and tracked like a satellite, however, moved much slower. Don't know about distance above the Earth, however, if it was in the atmosphere, there was no sound of any engine noise (I live in a very quiet area of the Island and any atmospheric sound from an airplane etc. would be audible). Also, there was no observable beam of light coming from the small object.

From the time I picked up the object until it disappeared into the East about 45 minutes later, it remained "parallel" to the "white blob", never varying its distance or speed. I have observed airplanes across the sky here, and this was not moving like an airplane. This tells me the object's distance from the Earth Surface was significantly higher.

One impression was a possible UFO, however, as I mentioned, there was no erratic pattern in its flight. Certainly doesn't rule it out, however, from what I've read (no I've never seen a UFO) UFO objects usually fly in erratic patterns.

Curious if anyone else saw this event Naked Eye???

"BOB-
I BELIEVE THAT THIS IS JUST THE RE-ENTRY of an un-cataloged piece of spacecraft or upper stage that could have been in orbit for many years. It could have been something as small as a large explosive nut or bolt used to tie satellites to an upper stage. "


A piece of space junk, a nut or bolt, re-entering the atmosphere for 45 minutes? Are you serious? Please explain how this is even a remote possibility.

there are some brilliant people out there

This would appear to be a fuel dump. The AMC-16 satellite was launched at 12:07 UT. Spacecraft separation was scheduled to occur 1:49 later (13:56 UT). I don't have the times but what followed next was the Contamination and Collision Avoidance Maneuver (CCAM). The first photo is at 14:19 UT. Twenty-three minutes seems like a reasonable time to wait before the fuel dump. 'Guest' probably saw AMC-16 in addition to the fuel (why didn't he see the Centaur upper stage)?

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av005/status.html
http://www.ilslaunch.com/launches/cbin/ ... _16_MO.pdf

A liquid wouldn't have the reflectivity seen in these images, although from the timing it does seem likely the object is something from the AMC-16's launching vehicle. Separation was due to occur 1:48:42 after launch.