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THANKSGIVING SKIES:
Thanksgiving is the biggest travel holiday
of the year in the United States. Millions of people board airplanes
and fly long hours to visit friends and family. Dreading the trip?
Think of it as a sky watching opportunity. There are some things
you can see only through the window of an airplane: full
story.
ISS TOOLBAG:
When Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped
her toolbag during a spacewalk on Nov. 18th and it floated away,
mission controllers probably thought they'd seen the last of it.
Think again. Amateur astronomers have been monitoring the backpack-sized
toolbag as it circles Earth not very far from the International
Space Station. (continued below)
Above: NASA TV footage of the runaway toolbag.
After sunset on Nov. 22nd, Edward Light saw the bag
using 10x50 binoculars as it sailed over his backyard in Lakewood,
New Jersey. "It was quite a favorable 70-deg pass in clear
skies," he says. "The visual magnitude of the bag was
about +6.4 plus or minus half a magnitude." On the same night,
Keven Fetter of Brockville, Ontario, video-recorded the bag zipping
past the 4th-magnitude star eta Pisces: 900
kB movie. "It was easily 8th magnitude or brighter,"
says Fetter.
This week the toolbag is making a series of passes
over Europe; late next week it will return to the evening skies
of North America. Using binoculars, look for it flying a few minutes
ahead of the ISS. Spaceweather's satellite tracker is monitoring
both the space station and the tool bag; click here
for predictions.
SUNSET SKY SHOW:
On one side of the sky, two bright planets converge. On the other
side, two bright satellites meet and flare. On the ground, a photographer
presses the button on his camera (a Canon
30D). Perfect timing:
Click to view the full-sized
image
"Venus and Jupiter were shining threough a gap in the clouds
last night when a pair of Iridium satellites passed overhead,"
says Mark Staples of
Waldo, Florida. Sunlight glinted off the satellites' flat antennas,
producing two supernova-like flares "within 20seconds and 1o
of each other. The brighter flare was already half-finished when
I started the exposure."
Double Iridium flares are uncommon. There are 66 active Iridium
satellites orbiting Earth, but they don't often cross paths at the
exact moment of a flare. In this case, an on-orbit spare in a lower
orbit lapped a higher, primary Iridium satellite; they met in sunlight
and oh-so-briefly stole the show from Venus and Jupiter.
Readers, keep an eye on the sunset sky tonight. Venus and Jupiter
are still there, rapidly converging for a spectacular
conjunction with the Moon at the end of the month. It's a lovely
show--no Iridium required.
Sky maps: Nov.
26, 27,
28, 29,
30, Dec
1.
more images: from
Gary A. Becker of Coopersburg, Pennsylvania; from
Jorge Solano of Guatemala City, Guatemala; from
Mahdi Zamani of Tehran, Iran; from
Alex Roca of Hortoneda, Lleida. Spain; from
Doug Zubenel of De Soto, Kansas; from
Gordon Garcia of Bartlett, Illinois; from
Sabahattin Bilsel of Gokcebel, Bodrum, Turkey
Nov.
2008 Aurora Gallery
[Previous Novembers: 2007,
2006, 2004,
2003, 2001,
2000]
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