Fireball!

I witnessed a probable fireball streaking low on the horizon at 6:58pm this evening, seen in the northwest sky while waiting at a stoplight at the intersection of Trabuco & Lake Forest Blvd., in Lake Forest, CA.

In order for me to have noticed this from inside my vehicle facing the glare of bright street lights and traffic signals, I would guess it was a pretty bright object.

Did any others see this?

(posted earlier by me earlier this evening to OCastronomers) So far I have received one response: "I did not see your fireball, but I saw a bright bolide last night during the Orionids meteor shower. Good stuff!"

Launch Alert! (Southern California Observers)

A Delta II rocket is scheduled for lift-off this Friday evening from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 7:28:21 pm Pacific Time.

According to "Launch Alert", this rocket will appear to rise vertically for a few seconds and then slowly head south. It will deliver Italy's COSMO-3 satellite into orbit, which will provide high-resolution radar images of Earth.

The launch should be visible for at least 200 miles (weather permitting).

Go check out http://www.spacearchive.info/ for more info.

Green Rain

This is the coolest aurora borealis photo I have seen yet.

From the October 6th edition of "SpaceWeather.com":

Saturday night, Oct. 4th, in Russia's Kolyskia peninsula, storm clouds gathered over Mt. Khibiny and the rain began to fall. Lo and behold, it was green:

[Click to see]

Northern Lights posing as rain are a common occurance in this arctic part of Russia, where photographer Aleksander Chernucho keeps his Nikon D200 close at hand for midnight photo-ops. On this night, the clouds pulled back revealing a bank of auroras so bright they turned the harbor waters as green as the sky: photo. "Good storm!"

Asteroid Will Hit Earth... Right Now!

Don't believe it? It's true. Even better: the asteroid was only discovered earlier today, by astronomers using the Mt. Lemmon telescope in Arizona.

Reports SpaceWeather.com, "If predictions were correct, asteroid 2008 TC3 has hit our planet, exploding in the atmosphere over northern Sudan like a kiloton of TNT and creating a fireball as bright as a full Moon, Most of the 3-meter-wide asteroid should have been vaporized in the atmosphere with only small pieces reaching the ground as meteorites."

SpaceWeather.com is the place to stay tuned for confirming reports and photos, not to mention the full fascinating story.

Most Wow Astro Pic of the Day Ever?

Very often, the most stunning celestial photographs are either digitally composited (i.e. multiple exposures) or false-colored. Not that there's anything demeaning about that--the image data still refers to real photons, and arguably allows us to observe that which would not otherwise be observable to us.

Nevertheless, such images require qualification to the layperson, something that rarely if ever occurs. (See my post, "Is There Evidence from Space of Man on Earth?".)

Orange County Astronomers member and veteran astrophotographer Wally Pacholka has taken one of the most stunningly spectacular and single exposure images I have ever seen. That means that it requires little qualification for the layperson, other than to say that it is a long exposure.

Enjoy, and be sure to read the description at the bottom.

Space Visionaries Prove Naysayers Wrong--Again

That's the title of this write-up over at Wired.com's Science blog, which begins:

"SpaceX's Falcon 1 became the first privately built liquid rocket to orbit the Earth tonight, following in the footsteps of SpaceShipOne which became the first privately built crewed spaceship to fly suborbitally in October 2004."

Read the whole thing!

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/space-visionari.html

(Hat tip: Keith S.)

The Story of Two-Meter Mike

I really like this story about "One-Meter Mike", a colorful and obsessive amateur astronomer from Utah.

http://www.kutvfreshair.com/plastic/?articleID=43809

Hat tip: Bob Rubendunst, Champaign-Urbana Astronomical Society