Starship Asterisk*

by **Johan** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:12 pm

>>"As for my own view: I am pretty sure that it is a fuel dump."

If so, is it possible that the momentum of the fuel and the rotation of the Earth could make the object 'seem' to move, relative to the background stars, about 52 degrees within 20 minutes?

The first image at 14:19UT shows the object south-east of the head of Hydra, moving towards Arcturus, ending up north-west of Jupiter, between it and Coma Berenices, at 14:39UT.

by **pep** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:20 pm

On 6:30 pm (PST) news, Channel 2KATU tv (abc affiliate) weatherman Ron said it would be a good night for tracking a certain comet(sorry I missed the name, but heard it had last been seen over Germany). We are just east of Hawaii here on the Oregon coast, and I understand from coast to coastam discussions with George Noory, that this is tracking west to east.. Would this have any bearing? KATU does have website, which is katu.com I believe.

by **djwayne** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:56 pm

With all the recent solar flares, cme's, is it possible this is some junk thrown at us from the sun ?? Is it possible the sun is throwing off liquid which cools and becomes hard over it's long journey ??

The CME's that I've seen seem to be extremely huge and loaded with what looks like dust from millions of miles away, but in fact be large chunks of matter heading out way ??.......

It is possible the sun is throwing off chunks that remain so hot, that when the land on earth, they start forest fires ??

by **trelayne** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:07 pm

Hi all,

The following timely paper in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society might be of interest:

http://www.ufoskeptic.org/JBIS.pdf

In addition, Peter Jennings will be hosting a serious look at this sort of thing on Prime Time Live (complete with Skeptic, and Military/Airline witness interviews):

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Primet ... ?id=468496

--Raj

by **jcm4589** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:22 pm

... not that mysterious at all. It's clearly venting fuel from the
discarded Centaur AV-005 stage, which had just launched the AMC-16 comms
satellite. On Dec 17 at 1419 UTC AV-005 was almost due south of Hawaii
at 6000 km over 162W 12N, on Dec 17 at 1439 UTC, AV-005 was 8850 km
above 136W 17N, which would put it about 33 deg off zenith at Haleakala
to the east and slightly south - the angle looks a little wrong, but the
match to the track on the animated gif is close enough that I'm pretty
confident of the identification.

Here at the CfA, the IAU Circulars folks have had
several "comet discoveries" reported to them that turned
out to be Centaur fuel dumps, so this sort of thing is often
pretty bright when the Sun-spacecraft-observer angle is right.
(In the old days, the dumps tended to happen at much
lower altitude and were less likely to be well illuminated,
so this is more a phenom of the past 10 years or so).
The cloud soon spreads out and fades.

regards, Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

by **Beorn** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:46 pm

I apologize for the long post but some people can't wade through 13 pages:

dolph wrote:...In short, in an order of magnitude calculation, it appears that this object is likely in a GTO (geosynchronous transfer orbit). The large size and slow motion make it an ideal candidate for the fuel dump theory...

ExNihilo wrote:I have no doubt the object was in a high orbit and dumping fuel along a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The orbital inclination corresponds well with a Kennedy Space Center Launch, and the perspective from Hawaii corresponds with a viewing geometry along the transfer orbit, with the apparent "slowing" indeed being caused by the change of perspective relative to the direction of the orbit. The transfer orbit was to have an 18.2 degree inclination, which seems to correspond well with the observed track:

http://www.aus-city.com/cgi-bin/ultimat ... 001145;p=0

The observed time of the track at Hawaii corresponds well with a fuel dump from the upper stage occurring after the satellite, with its final geostationary boost module attached, separated at 1355 UT. Also, with launch from Cape Kennedy to a parking orbit of 166x5239 KM occurring at 1207 UT, the arrival of the vehicle over Hawaii at the time observed seems to be in good agreement with orbital dynamics. Further, passage of the vehicle through its ascending node (crossing the equator heading ENE) shortly before observation at Hawaii is also quite consistent.

malaclypse wrote:go to the atlas-16 flight path (previously posted) listed here:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av0 ... track.html

this satellite was commissioned by a satTV company (Echostar's DISH Network) to send a signal obtainable in all 50 states, so it's path would have placed it in a geosynchronous orbit somewhere near north america. if you connect the dots, so to speak, between separation and the US, the satellite would have passed to the southeast of hawaii. meanwhile, the sun would have been just below the horizon in the east (as it was about 4:15 am local time when the pictures were taken), and because of the inclination of the earth on dec 17th (the southern hemisphere tilted towards the sun at ~22 degrees w/ respect to the equator), the cloud of fuel/gas/whatever would have been in a direct line (on the earth's surface) between the sun and hawaii, in perfect position to reflect the sun's rays back down to the telescopes there...

Hawaiian Starman wrote:*eyewitness*
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.

- the "object's" brightness remained consistent during my observation (around 45 minutes). I'd say the magnitude was definitely on the minus side of the scale. Very easy naked eye object. It was not as visually bright as Arctaurus. However, since it covered a significantly larger part of the sky, visual magnitude was difficult to discern. The magnitude of the companion "satellite" or whatever it was, probably would be around 8 or 9 magnitude - definitely not naked eye (sky visibility was very good as the Southern Milky Way was quite vivid.

- there was only 1 small object tracking to the right of the white blob. If there was a second piece to the Centaur rocket, I didn't see it telescopically. ...

jcm4589 wrote:... not that mysterious at all. It's clearly venting fuel from the
discarded Centaur AV-005 stage, which had just launched the AMC-16 comms
satellite. On Dec 17 at 1419 UTC AV-005 was almost due south of Hawaii
at 6000 km over 162W 12N, on Dec 17 at 1439 UTC, AV-005 was 8850 km
above 136W 17N, which would put it about 33 deg off zenith at Haleakala
to the east and slightly south - the angle looks a little wrong, but the
match to the track on the animated gif is close enough that I'm pretty
confident of the identification.

Here at the CfA, the IAU Circulars folks have had
several "comet discoveries" reported to them that turned
out to be Centaur fuel dumps, so this sort of thing is often
pretty bright when the Sun-spacecraft-observer angle is right.
(In the old days, the dumps tended to happen at much
lower altitude and were less likely to be well illuminated,
so this is more a phenom of the past 10 years or so).
The cloud soon spreads out and fades.

regards, Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

So again, what we have is:

1) The AMC-16 Atlas V liftoff took place at 12:07 UT on Dec 17th 2004
2) At 1:56 UT (13:56), separation of the spacecraft from the upper stage occurred in a GTO (geosynchronous transfer orbit) over the Soloman Islands ( http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av0 ... track.html )
3) At 2:19 UT (14:19), a strange object is seen over Hawaii, directly in line with the above ground track if you continue it to the northeast. An eyewitness account states that the object was visible for a long time (~50 minutes) and was somewhat transparent as stars could be seen through the object. Also, another smaller object was seen near the larger one through a telescope. Finally parallax between the two observatories puts the altitude at >1000 km.

So all together you have at least 5 people here (including myself) who have crunched the AMC-16 launch data and determined that the rocket would have been near Hawaii (visible) at around 14:19 and in a GTO. A ground track produced from the mission profile confirms these calculations and places the rocket in the same place at approximately the same time . An eyewitness account of something transparent yet so large it was 2 times the moon's diameter, and parallax information from the two sites confirming that the object was >1000 km in height. So the AMC-16 launch profile that day agrees with respect to time and location with two separate visual observations of the same event.

Even if you temporarily set the above launch information aside, if you take the parallax information (>1000km) coupled with other regular observations it's clear the object was well outside the atmosphere and also very, very large. For example, the International Space Station which is roughly 9,600 square feet in surface area, and is the largest man made object in orbit, appears as no more than a bright "star" (magnitude -2 at it's brightest) when seen from the Earth's surface at an altitude of ~350 km. Something 3 times higher (parallax) and hundreds of times bigger (2 times the moons diameter), yet nearly as bright (Arcturus is magnitude -0.04) and also transparent, could only be a large cloud of gas.

Taking this conclusion as separate and then comparing it with the AMC-16 launch profile, all of the data, observations and common sense point to a Centaur fuel dump as being the answer to what was seen that night.

by **speedracer3** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:21 pm

This jpeg was captured on Oct. 18 2004 by NASA

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i ... 022583.jpg

by **astroboylarry** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:28 pm

I also believe it could be a ballon, likely high altitude since it was visible for 30 minutes. What direction does the high altitude wind blow over Hawaii? Perhaps someone could check this out.

If this can be ruled out, I think the only remaining possibility is a small asteroid. Satellites this slow would be so high they would be tiny and not bright, especially for an extended period of time.

by **kmarinas86** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:32 pm

by **Dan Cordell** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:50 pm

Muskokee wrote:My main question is: What constitutes a conspiracy theory?

It is difficult to define.

While this is not the place to discuss such a thing, I will say that, for the purposes of how I moderate things, a "conspiracy theory" is going to generally be any wild claim that presents either no proof or "proof" based on further speculation. (example: "this must be aliens because I saw a spaceship when I was 12, and the government is just trying to cover it up with other explainations.")

While I will attempt to be light on the moderation and allow different ideas and discussions to go around, this is at the core a scientific forum and has little room for wild speculations or circular logic.

by **kmarinas86** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:50 pm

http://planet4589.org/space/jsr/latest.html

AMC-12
------

The Americom 12 satellite, also known as Worldsat 2, was launched
on Feb 3 from Baykonur into geostationary transfer orbit.
The launch used a Proton-M rocket with a Briz-M upper stage.
AMC-12 is the first Alcatel Spacebus 4000 satellite to be launched;
the SB 4000 is a larger version of the SB 3000, with a launch
mass around 5000 kg.

Meanwhile, some astronomers got a nice picture of the launch
on Dec 17 of AMC-16, showing the fuel dump from the Centaur
AV-005 stage, at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050208.html.
Since many astronomers still aren't that familiar with satellite
launch events, the associated discussion board has been treating
it as a big mystery!

by **javon27** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 6:50 pm

what i mean, is like using I think it's quicktime 3d viewer? the one they use to make panoramic pictures that you can view on the internet. since this is an image from a fish eye lense you know... may be you can stretch that image so it won't be distorted. that way we can see that the tail doesn't really shrink. and what's this about the satellite was on the east coast? someone really needs to hurry up and calculate the height...

by **rkroads** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 6:52 pm

I concur with Jonathan McDowell. I reviewed the AV-005 Centaur rocket body trajectory during the period shown in the animation, and it was indeed traveling to the south of Hawaii while venting the remaining propellant.

Ronnie Schneider
Lockheed Martin Atlas Program

by **RJN** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 6:58 pm

I think it is fair to conclude that the object seen was the fuel dump of the AMC-16 rocket launch. Since the trajectory matches there is really no other explanation. This fuel dump was unexpectedly bright -- one of the brightest yet recorded. I am therefore closing this topic. I would like to thank the APOD community for figuring out yet another astronomical mystery.
- RJN

Starship Asterisk*

Which satellite is this?

Mysterious Object

Not so mysterious

ufo

A Mysterious Streak Above Hawaii

Re: A question for Mr. Cordell...

What about creating a 3d image?

Thank you

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