Starship Asterisk*

rmercer wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:15 pm Torn between thinking "UFO" should be included, and relieved that it was not! :roll:
Of couse APOD is thoroghly professional, but it is likely true that some sporadic "lights in the sky" originating in the atmosphere are not identified.

Dave92F1 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 3:30 pm Satellites often (usually!) "blink", just slowly (as they rotate).

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:37 pm

rmercer wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:15 pm Torn between thinking "UFO" should be included, and relieved that it was not!
Of couse APOD is thoroghly professional, but it is likely true that some sporadic "lights in the sky" originating in the atmosphere are not identified.

They're all UFOs until your path through the chart terminates!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/sunao-tsuboi-dead/2021/11/05/79f994da-3e46-11ec-bfad-8283439871ec_story.html wrote:
Sunao Tsuboi, Hiroshima survivor who campaigned against nuclear war, dies at 96
By Emily Langer, Washington Post, November 5, 2021

<<Sunao Tsuboi, an engineering student at a university in Hiroshima, was making his way across the city’s Miyuki Bridge en route to a morning class when, in a sudden, terrifying moment on Aug. 6, 1945, blazing light flooded his surroundings. A blast threw him more than 30 feet, leaving him unconscious. When he awoke, the light was gone, subsumed by an awful pall. “I know now,” he told the British Daily Mirror decades later, “I was under the mushroom cloud.”

Convinced of his own impending death, Mr. Tsuboi used a pebble to scrawl the words “Tsuboi died here,” a marker for friends who might come searching for his remains. When he died Oct. 24 at 96, he had outlived by more than 76 years his expectation that day, when the world first observed the horror of nuclear war and when Mr. Tsuboi was set on his path as an international advocate for disarmament.>>

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:37 pm

rmercer wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:15 pm Torn between thinking "UFO" should be included, and relieved that it was not!
Of couse APOD is thoroghly professional, but it is likely true that some sporadic "lights in the sky" originating in the atmosphere are not identified.

They're all UFOs until your path through the chart terminates!

neufer wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 4:58 pm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/sunao-tsuboi-dead/2021/11/05/79f994da-3e46-11ec-bfad-8283439871ec_story.html wrote:
Sunao Tsuboi, Hiroshima survivor who campaigned against nuclear war, dies at 96
By Emily Langer, Washington Post, November 5, 2021

<<Sunao Tsuboi, an engineering student at a university in Hiroshima, was making his way across the city’s Miyuki Bridge en route to a morning class when, in a sudden, terrifying moment on Aug. 6, 1945, blazing light flooded his surroundings. A blast threw him more than 30 feet, leaving him unconscious. When he awoke, the light was gone, subsumed by an awful pall. “I know now,” he told the British Daily Mirror decades later, “I was under the mushroom cloud.”

Convinced of his own impending death, Mr. Tsuboi used a pebble to scrawl the words “Tsuboi died here,” a marker for friends who might come searching for his remains. When he died Oct. 24 at 96, he had outlived by more than 76 years his expectation that day, when the world first observed the horror of nuclear war and when Mr. Tsuboi was set on his path as an international advocate for disarmament.>>

De58te wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 6:54 pm
They missed one light in the sky that falls under - Is it moving? so quick you almost missed it. Their answer states it is a fireball, but I was thinking of a lightning bolt. Those aren't really ball shaped and they aren't made out of fire. Made out of electricity, which scientifically isn't fire, but it can cause fire upon contact. You can also say there is a thunderous sound similar to an explosion so it also can't be a bolide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning wrote:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<Ball lightning is an unexplained phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. Julio Rubinstein, David Finkelstein, and James R. Powell proposed that ball lightning is a detached St. Elmo's fire (1964–1970). St. Elmo's fire arises when a sharp conductor, such as a ship's mast, amplifies the atmospheric electric field to breakdown. A free ball of ionized air can amplify the ambient field by its own conductivity. When this maintains the ionization, the ball is then a soliton in the flow of atmospheric electricity. A review of the available literature published in 1972 identified the properties of a "typical" ball lightning, whilst cautioning against over-reliance on eye-witness accounts:

• They frequently appear almost simultaneously with cloud-to-ground lightning discharge
  
  They are generally spherical or pear-shaped with fuzzy edges
  
  Their diameters range from 1–100 cm, most commonly 10–20 cm
  
  Their brightness corresponds to roughly that of a domestic lamp
  
  A wide range of colors has been observed, red, orange, and yellow being the most common
  
  The lifetime of each event is from one second to over a minute
  
  They tend to move at a few meters per second, most often in a horizontal direction, but may also move vertically, remain stationary, or wander erratically
  
  Many are described as having rotational motion
  
  It is rare that observers report the sensation of heat, although in some cases the disappearance of the ball is accompanied by the liberation of heat
  
  Some display an affinity for metal objects and may move along conductors such as wires or metal fences
  
  Some appear within buildings passing through closed doors and windows
  
  Some have appeared within metal aircraft and have entered and left without causing damage
  
  The disappearance of a ball is generally rapid and may be either silent or explosive
  
  Odors resembling ozone, burning sulfur, or nitrogen oxides are often reported

The emission spectrum of a natural ball lightning

---

In January 2014, scientists from Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou, China, published the results of recordings made in July 2012 of the optical spectrum of what was thought to be natural ball lightning made by chance during the study of ordinary cloud–ground lightning on the Tibetan Plateau. At a distance of 900 m, a total of 1.64 seconds of digital video of the ball lightning and its spectrum was made, from the formation of the ball lightning after the ordinary lightning struck the ground, up to the optical decay of the phenomenon. Additional video was recorded by a high-speed (3000 frames/sec) camera, which captured only the last 0.78 seconds of the event, due to its limited recording capacity. Both cameras were equipped with slitless spectrographs. The researchers detected emission lines of neutral atomic silicon, calcium, iron, nitrogen, and oxygen—in contrast with mainly ionized nitrogen emission lines in the spectrum of the parent lightning. The ball lightning traveled horizontally across the video frame at an average speed equivalent of 8.6 m/s. It had a diameter of 5 m and covered a distance of about 15 m within those 1.64 s.

Oscillations in the light intensity and in the oxygen and nitrogen emission at a frequency of 100 hertz, possibly caused by the electromagnetic field of the 50 Hz high-voltage power transmission line in the vicinity, were observed. From the spectrum, the temperature of the ball lightning was assessed as being lower than the temperature of the parent lightning (<15,000 to 30,000 K). The observed data are consistent with vaporization of soil as well as with ball lightning's sensitivity to electric fields.>>

Ann wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:58 am
As for the ISS, I think I have seen it twice, but I noticed that it moved, it was very bright, and then quite quickly it got fainter and disappeared.
. . .

Ann

MarkBour wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:57 am

Ann wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:58 am
As for the ISS, I think I have seen it twice, but I noticed that it moved, it was very bright, and then quite quickly it got fainter and disappeared.
. . .

Ann

I have enjoyed this: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/
I wondered if this was only available in the United States, but when I put in "Malmo, SWE" as a location, it came up with data.

Mainly, this service allows you to get advanced warning of personalized sighting opportunities in an email (they send an email each day that conditions are right. They don't bother you on other days. Typically, in a month, I get about 2-3 emails).

On good days, I would describe the ISS in the sky as "a steady, stately, progression".