The "Piece of MIR" that quite probably isn't

During the previous weekend, a story appeared in several news outlets (e.g. here and here and here) in which a man from Amesbury, Massachusetts, claims to have found a strange rock in a riverbed which "NASA" (according to the story) next identified as either a piece of the Russian space station MIR or a piece of "MIR era space debris" (the latter depending on the news outlet).

MIR was a Russian Space Station, in many ways the fore-runner of the ISS, which was de-orbited in March 2001.

While the story was quickly and uncritically proliferated by several news outlets (even RIA Novosti), many space and satellite buffs (including this blog's author) were suspicious of the claims right away. The object, a glassy piece of rock, looked nothing like a genuine piece of space debris. And the specific link to MIR or a MIR-era Russian spacecraft seemed dubious in the absence of a recognizable machine part morphology or machine part registration number.

Here are a couple of pictures of the object, which are screenshots from the CBS Boston video news report here:

The man who reportedly found it, claims he picked it up from the mud at low tide several years ago at a point where his backyard touches on the banks of the Merrimack river. It was a greenish glassy rock "covered in mud".

He put it under a tree in his yard where it sat for several years until his sister in law, who knew someone at NASA, sent it to that person for analysis. Or so the story goes. Many months later, the object was returned with a letter purporting to be from a NASA engineer called "George Leussis". In this letter it was identified as "a piece of MIR" or ballast from a MIR-era Russian spacecraft.

But is it? To be frank: most likely it is not.

First of all, while ballast is sometimes indeed added to space launches (to let the launch mass match the rocket performance), this is not in the form of rock. Such ballast is usually water (in a tank), sand, or metal. And glass is not a major component of spacecraft (glass fiber is though). Certainly not in seizable chunks.

More important than that: what are the reasons to think this is space debris in the first place? It doesn't look like a part of a spacecraft at all. It looks like a glassy rock.

The piece looks like a silicate glass, with clear signs of weathering (e.g. the pitting on the surface, the dull glossy shine), and clear conchoidal flaking (best seen on the third picture above).  Contrary to the impression given by the news reports, I can see no evidence of a "fiery entry through the atmosphere" on the pictures of the piece. It looks like a smelt alright, but contrary to what many people think that is not what you get from an atmospheric reentry. Pieces will ablate and will get a thin fusion crust (thin melt layer) just like meteorites, but they do not melt completely and next solidify into a clump again.

The conchoidal fracturing certainly would have to have taken place after any melting, and given that the flaked surface has the same green-brown colour there, the latter colour is certainly not due to any superficial burning.

To be honest the object looks very much like either one of two things (which can look quite alike on photographs, since both are silicate melts):

1) a piece of  obsidian (volcanic glass);
2) a piece of industrial silicate slag.

The first is a natural material: the second is man-made waste. Both basically consist of solidified clumps of glass and often have a dark blackish, greyish, brownish or greenish colour. They can show flow lines in the glass, vesicles, and are subject to weathering phenomena that include surface pitting from dissolution. All of which can be seen on the pictures of the object in question.

So what actually traces this clump of silicate melt to the Russian space program rather than a more earthly origin? The short answer: apparently nothing.

A molten silicate is not unique to products of the Russian space program. In fact it is not likely to be a product of any space program. It is very ubiquitous on earth as industrial waste, as volcanic product etcetera. Only if a geologist can ascertain the object is none of those, then one can think of another, more wilder and rare origin - such as Russian space "ballast". Note that none of the news stories mentions a geologist looking at the object - they only mention a NASA engineer (but: see below!).

The next claim in the story is the specific link to the Russian space program (rather than space debris in general) - Mir or Progress. In the absence of a recognizable morphology or a machine part number, this link is completely uncorroborated.

At the least, I would like to see a clear chemical analysis with an argument why the composition would uniquely point to the Russian space program, as opposed to a common terrestrial origin (i.e. an industrial slag or a volcanic glass).

The letter quoted in one of the news articles claims such, but in vague and  ambiguous wording. It seems to say the material is terrestrial, and only the "green colour and strange properties" according to the letter point to it having been "subjected to a fall from low Earth orbit". The green colour is however certainly not unusual for industrial silicate slag and volcanic glass, and I see no "strange properties" in the published images of the rock nor the descriptions of the rock that would point to it having experienced an atmospheric entry (or would be unusual for an industrial silicate slag or volcanic glass). Moreover: the apparent "letter from NASA"  has since come under suspicion.

For here is the clincher: it is claimed that the identification was made by a NASA engineer called George Luessis. An engineer called George Luessis indeed works for NASA (he was part of the Chandra project), BUT: upon being asked by Harvard astrophysicist and space buff Jonathan McDowell, he denies any knowledge of this object and the letter and says he didn't make this identification. 

So who did make that identification then? Who wrote that letter, if truely there is a letter? Another engineer called George Luessis working for NASA?

Basically, at this point this whole story is falling to (green, glassy) pieces. The rock looks like material that is ubiquitous on Earth. There is nothing in the morphology to link it to a Space Program (let alone the Russian Space Program), i.e. nothing in the composition and morphology to think it is space debris. In fact, there is much in the morphology that makes that highly unlikely. And it is not clear who at NASA, if anyone at all, analysed the rock and "identified" it as "space debris". There is/was a George Luessis working at NASA, but it was not him. So who?

It can be seriously doubted that this green glassy rock is a piece of space debris. There is not a shred of verifiable evidence for it and much speaks against it.

Fireball seen over Eastern Australia, 13 June 2013 6:05 pm AEST, was NOT the decay of Molniya 3-53

On June 13, 2013, near 6:05 pm local time (AEST - corresponding to 10:05 UTC), many people in Eastern Australia observed a bright fast light falling down in the sky. It was even recorded by one of those new-fangled dashboard-cams (one of these days, I must get me one for my bike).

The Australian news website "The Chronicle" claims it was a satellite decay - more exactly, that of the Russian Molniya platform Molniya 3-53 (2003-029A).

It was however most definitely not a satellite decay.

All descriptions talk about a fast object. The dashcam video shows a pretty fast fireball indeed.

It is much too fast to be a decaying satellite. The latter move at relatively slow speeds - 8.5 km/s. At that speed, it takes them several minutes to traverse your sky, not just a few seconds. As low over the horizon as the dashcam video shows it, it would have been very, very slow, taking several tens of seconds to traverse the distance it does in the video.

In addition to it being too fast to be a satellite decay, the proposed connection to Molniya 3-53 can be rejected right away.

First: Molniya 3-53 did not decay on June 13. Orbital data by Strategic Space Command ("NORAD") show it was still in orbit in the early hours of June 15 - two days after the Australian fireball. At the moment of writing (12 UTC, June 15), the last available orbit is for epoch 13166.42726929 ( = 15 June 2013, 10:15 UTC). The moment of decay is currently predicted as 15 June 14:04 UTC, with an uncertainty of 2 hours. [Update 22/6: SSC's final TIP-message issued 15 June 15:30 UTC gives 15 June, 14:10 UTC +/- 26 minutes for the moment of decay)

Now, given that the apogee of the satellite was at a very low altitude already, could it have been the case that it briefly started to burn but survived after it passed perigee?

The answer is "no" in this case and brings us to a second point against the identification with this satellite: Molniya 3-53 was not over Australia at June 13, 10:05 UTC. It was at very high altitude over Northern Europe at that time (see map below). It would not pass over (central) Australia untill 10:55 UTC (6:55 pm AEST), i.e. a full hour later than the fireball sighting.

So what was it then? Given the speed, it is very clear this was a meteoric fireball, a small piece of cosmic rock or ice (debris from a comet or an asteroid) entering the atmosphere.

ATV-4 and ISS, 15 hours before docking (and Progress too)

After a few cloudy and rainy days, it miraculously cleared in the afternoon of the 14th. This allowed me a last view on the ATV-4 before docking to the International Space Station ISS.

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I observed two passes. The first was in very deep evening twilight (sun at -6 degrees altitude) at 22:56 local time (20:56 UT). ISS and ATV-4 passed almost right overhead, the ATV slightly over 2 minutes in time behind ISS and both easily visible. I had set up my video equipment, but forgot to press the "record" button....

The next pass was under a darker sky, at 00:32 local time (22:32 UT). I walked a few tens of yards to the city moat to see it (I have better view at low elevations there). ISS and ATV-4 attained a maximum elevation of 28 degrees in the S-SW. The photograph above is from that pass. Using the 2.8/17-50 mm Tamron at the 17 mm setting, I could just catch ISS and ATV in one image - with a stray old Russian military satellite as a bonus (Kosmos 1315 (1981-103A), a defunct Tselina-D ELINT launched in 1981. A Japanese H-2A r/b briefly became bright as well and is visible in some images (but not the one above).



I had also set up the video, filming from my GF's appartment. About 16 minutes before the ISS pass, I filmed Progress M-19M (2013-007A). This cargoship, now filled with trash, was undocked from the ISS a few days ago to make room for the ATV. It will reenter on June 19th. In the video above, while the Progess is passing, look for a brief bright flash just below the image center at 22:13:36. This is a flashing geostationary satellite (probably NSTAR A, 1995-044A). The video next cuts to the ISS pass 16 minutes later, followed by ATV-4 and a couple of bats in the last seconds of the video.

The image below is a stack of 28 photographs, showing ATV-4, the ISS, Kosmos 1315 (barely) and the H-2A r/b (top):

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Another fine pass of ATV-4, and objects from a recent Russian Persona launch

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Following my observations of June 5-6 (see photo's and video here) and a visual observation on June 6-7, yet another fine sighting of the ATV-4 Albert Einstein was done yesterday around local midnight. First I watched the ISS pass, followed 17 minutes later by the ATV. The image above, which is a stack of six images of 5 seconds exposure each (Canon EOS 60D + EF 2.8/24mm, 640 ISO), shows the ATV-4 ascending over the rooftops as seen from the courtyard of my home in Leiden.

I also obtained video again using the WATEC. The video below shows part of the passof the ATV, and then continues with some footage of the earlier ISS pass. While the ISS is ascending over the roof, two other objects can be seen (from 1:28 in the video onwards), chasing each other from left to right just over the rooftops, in a trajectory perpendicular to that of the ISS:



These two objects are related to the launch of Kosmos 2486, a Russian military Persona satellite, the Russian version of the US Keyhole optical reconnaisance satellites. Kosmos 2486 was launched 3.5 hours before this sighting (at 18:37 UTC on June 7th) by a Soyuz rocket from Plesetsk. These objects have been catalogued as 2013-028A and B - the B object is the leading object in the video above. This would indicate the trailing object is the Persona satellite, the leading object the upper Soyuz stage.

Bringing the ATV to the ISS: a stepped process

The ATV-4 Albert Einstein, currently on it's way to the International Space Station (see images of passes over Leiden here), does not ascend in a linear fashion. The ascend towards the ISS is in phases.

Below is a diagram showing you how the orbital altitude of the ATV-4 spacecraft has developed over the past two days and will develop, if everything goes according to plan, over the coming few days untill it docks to the ISS at the 15th. As the orbit of the spacecraft is not neatly circular but somewhat an ellipse, values for the highest point (apogee) and lowest point (perigee) of the orbit are given.

click diagram to enlarge

It might surprise you, but over the past two days the orbital altitude of ATV-4 has gradually come down, not up. You can see this in the diagram above. It concerns a slight orbital altitude decrease of just a few kilometers, no more. This is because the ATV  is currently just moving in a parking orbit around earth without major manoeuvering. As a result, the orbit currently slightly decays (it is slowly pulled in by Earth as a result of gravity and atmospheric drag): it is very slightly coming down!

A major manoeuvre to counter this will occur on June 10th, lifting the spacecraft up from approximately 250 km to approximately 290 km altitude. The orbit will then slightly decay to slightly lower altitudes again, as the ATV will again be drifting. More manoeuvres raising the orbit slightly to counter this orbital decay will occur on June 12th, but the major manoeuvres will be on the 14th and 15th. These latter are the manoevres which will bring the ATV up close to the orbital altitude of the ISS (see diagram above), first bringing it up to approximately 380 km altitude, and then to about 400 to 410 km, and close to the ISS. It will be somewhat in front of the ISS initially, and move closer to the ISS as the orbit is gently raised. A complicated set of manoeuvres then will bring the ATV to the ISS for docking.

click diagram to enlarge

Note: diagrams constructed using orbital data for the ATV-4 kindly provided by ESA here.

Images and video of ESA's Space Cargo Ship ATV-4 'Albert Einstein' over Leiden

(click image to enlarge)

ATV-4 passing over the historic observatory of Leiden, 1:21 UT

stack of 8 images

ESA successfully launched its 4th cargoship ATV-4 Albert Einstein from Kourou last night at 21:52 UT, loaded with cargo destined for the International Space Station ISS.

Following the launch it made two visible passes over Leiden, the first of these two hours after launch at 23:47 UT (1:47 am local time) and a second in morning twilight at 1:20 UT (3:20 am local time). The sky was clear and I could observe both passes well.

I used both my Canon EOS 60D photocamera and my WATEC video camera to image the passes. Above is a photograph shot during the second pass (1:21 UT), showing the ATV descending over the old historic Observatory of Leiden. The image is a stack of 8 images of 5 second exposure each, taken in rapid succession. The lens used was an EF 2.8/24mm.

Below is a video shot during the first pass at 23:47 UT. The ATV, faint at first but then quickly becoming quite bright, can be seen ascending just right of the house in the opening shots:



Note how from 50 seconds in the video onwards, TWO objects are visible: a fainter object (about magnitude +4) is leading the ATV by a few seconds. This is the Ariane upper stage. It is also visible on the photograph below, taken with an EF 2.0/35mm lens:

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ATV-4 was very bright on both passes and easily seen by the naked eye: magnitude +1 on the first pass and +0.5 on the second. It moved quite fast, being in a low orbit at an altitude of about 280 km.

In fact, ATV-4 made a third pass this nigh only 20 minutes after launch, near 22:12 UT (00:12 local time). As it was not entirely clear whether the ATV would be in earth shadow or illuminated  during this pass (this early in the launch it is at still very low altitude, below 150 km) I did watch, but as expected it was in earth shadow and not visible.

Below are two more pictures from the 23:47 pass. One shows the ATV ascending in the west, close to the Coma berenices cluster. The second one shows it descending in the east, and shows two other (unrelated) objects: and old Russian Soyuz r/b, and the US military satellite NOSS 2-3 E.

click images to enlarge

Tracking ESA's ATV-4 "Albert Einstein" the coming nights

If all goes well, ESA's cargoship ATV-4 "Albert Einstein" will be launched from Kourou on top of an Ariane rocket tonight at 23:52 CEST (21:52 UTC). It will dock to the International Space Station ISS on 15 June. A live webcast of the launch will be featured here.

During the 10 days it takes to get to the ISS, it will make several visible passes over Europe, starting the coming night (June 5/6). On the night of June 14/15, it will be possible to see ATV-4 and the ISS pass around the same time, closing in on each other just hours before docking.

For those of you who want to try to photograph an ATV pass themselves, I have written a tutorial, that is featured on ESA's ATV weblog.

Visible passes for NW Europe the coming night (June 5/6) occur at approximately:

* 01:47 CEST (23:47 UTC)
This is a pass that is very favourable for the UK, Netherlands and mid-Germany. In the Netherlands we will see the ATV pass right through the zenit! Here is a trajectory card (valid for Leiden, the Netherlands: elsewhere in Europe the trajectory will be different! For elsewhere in the Netherlands, the trajectory might slightly shift) and a map of the relevant groundtrack:

* 03:20 CEST (01:20 UTC)
A pass in twilight over a.o. the southern UK and France (but also visible from the Netherlands and Germany):

Please note that the spacecraft is actively manoeuvering, and this means that the listed pass times are approximate: there might be differences up to a few minutes with the real pass times.

If you want to get an accurate sky trajectory map for your own location, then Heavens-Above should have predictions available from the moment of launch. A live ground tracking application is available here (it will tell you over which part of the globe the ATV is, but not where in your sky however).

If your are able to run your own predictions (e.g. with Heavensat), then ESA has kindly made TLE's available here.

The relevant TLE for tonight (5/6 June) is:

ATV-4
1 00000U 13156A   13156.95908050  .00000000  00000-0  11891-3 0  0008
2 00000 051.6512 167.2588 0016658 269.7524 354.7951 16.02929810 00002

Depending on the illumination conditions, the ATV can reach mag. +1 and hence be easily visible by the naked eye during a favourable pass.

PAN has moved again [UPDATED]

On April 23 I wrote the following about PAN (2009-047A) and its frequent relocations in my post here:

"No doubt it will move again in the future, perhaps in May as December and May are frequently the months the satellite is moved"

I was very right with the "perhaps in May": PAN is on the move again!

Greg Roberts observing from South-Africa noted it missing at its old position on April 29. He recovered it on May 4th near the commercial geostationary Comsat Yamal 404. It is not (yet) clear whether that is its final position, or whether it is still drifting. Greg next initially thought he recovered it near the commercial comsat Yamal 404 on imagery from May 4th, but that turned out to be a mistake: as Mike McCants pointed out, the object in question was in reality the commercial geosat GSAT 8.

Ian Roberts, another South African observer, then located what likely indeed is PAN near Intelsat 12 on May 6th. Greg Roberts then managed to find it in his earlier images of May 4th as well, confirming Ian's observations.

Just goes to show that even the most secret of all satellites cannot escape the inquisitive eyes of a dedicated amateur.

No, fragments of the Tunguska object have not been found - or at least there is no real positive proof of that

The twittersphere, science news sites and mailinglists are abuzz with the story that fragments of the object that caused the famous 30 June 1908 Tunguska explosion have been found.

Most of them link to this post on the MIT Technology Review blog, which bases itself on this manuscript posted to Arxiv.org by  a Russian named Andrei Zlobin.

To cut it short: it is highly unlikely the objects in question, which were reportedly retrieved from shoal sediments of the Khusmo river, are fragments of the Tunguska object. The "evidence" provided is wholly unsatisfactory. I am convinced the manuscript will not pass peer review (note that papers posted on Arxiv.org are manuscripts: the paper in question hasn't been accepted for publication by any scientific journal yet. And it shouldn't be, in my opinion).

In my opinion the pictured objects look like normal terrestrial iron hydroxide concretions, such as you can find in sandy soils with fluctuating water table and in bogs (and in river sediments that sample such environments). Morphologically they are quite typical for such concretions, especially specimens #3 and #1.

The shell-like character (e.g. #3) is characteristic, as such concretions often form as layers around a core of other material. So I see no reason at all to think these must instead be meteoritic.

In addition, the arxiv paper doesn't give any chemical analysis at all in support of the suggestion these are meteoritic particles. This while such an analysis is the least what you would expect for a claim like this.

The arxiv paper doesn't give any clear chronostratigraphical links between these particles and 1908 (and with this the Tunguska explosion) either. Why should this be particles from the 1908 explosion? What points to that particular origin for these particles? Do they come from sediments that are unambiguously dated to 1908? Zlobin gives no arguments at all.

In other words: this is highly dubious and for now a totally unbelievable story. It is a pitty that many science news websites, starting with the MIT Technology Review but also including Space.com are so uncritically disseminating this Arxiv.org manuscript.

PANSTARRS and Polar Light - Finland, March 2013

From 17 to 24 March I was in Finland, having fun in the snow at the Arctic circle. We stayed at Basecamp Oulanka at Juumajärvi, 66.26 N, from where we did snowshoe hikes, a husky sled tour, some cross-country skiing, and a trip to a world-famous bird shelter in order to see the Golden Eagle.

Of course, when going to the Arctic circle you hope for Aurora Borealis - the Northern Lights. I had seen Northern Lights before, from the Netherlands (where it is rare but on occasion can be seen), and it was stunning. So my hopes were high for an even better Arctic display. In addition, comet PANSTARRS was slowly moving out of the solar glare around that time. My secret mission: to get an image of the comet with Northern lights.

Mission accomplished, on the very first evening:

click image to enlarge

The photograph is a stitch of two images made with the EOS 60D and a Tamron 17-50mm at 17mm. It was made in late evening twilight of March 17th, the start of an evening with incredible Northern Lights. An M1-class solar flare on the 15th resulted in an earth-directed CME which arrived at the 17th - our first evening in Finland. The result: astonishing Aurora all over the sky, with two especially intense periods between 20-21h local time and around local midnight. The first peak was very colorfull, with a.o. deep purples in addition to green. During the second peak near midnight, it was mostly green Aurora It was very lively, significantly changing on sub-second scales. Rays, dancing curtains, multiple corona's, it was all visible. Seeing Northern Lights in Orion was quite special too.

This all with friendly temperatures of -25 C... As I repeatedly worked the camera with my gloves off, my fingers got numbed, resulting in some images later that night where the camera had moved during exposure, because I hadn't thightened the clampscrews of the tripod head enough. I also used one of my woolen gloves to put the Aputure timer in, as the batteries suffered from the cold. The camera itself help up remarkably well though.

During the first peak I took pictures from the nearby lake Juuma: during the second peak I photographed from the basecamp itself, using the wooden chalets to create some scenic foregrounds. Lenses used were a SamYang 3.5/8mm semi fish-eye, and the 17-50mm Tamron. Here are some pictures (exposures range from 2 to 10 seconds:

click images to enlarge

I took a number of series for a time lapse, resulting in this movie (put it on HD and full-screen: it is 1200x800 pixels):


As it turned out, that night was the only night with aurora that week - but what a splendid show it was! The local Fin people claimed it was the best show of the season.

The next evening, I targetted comet 2011 L4 PANSTARRS in evening twilight, using the Zeiss 2.8/180mm. The following image is a stack of 9 images of 1s each, taken from an unguided stationary tripod:

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Just before leaving for Finalnd, I already had some views of the comet from (near) my home town Leiden in the Netherlands as well. This image was shot on March 12th from the Cronesteyn polder just east of Leiden:

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After I returned from Finland, I took a last picture of the comet in the evening of April 2nd, when it was close to M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. This image is a stack of 21 images of 1s each taken with a SamYang 1.4/85mm at F2.8. I had to do quite some image processing, as the images were suffering from light pollution:

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PAN and Mentor 4 in March

Finally, an update on my observing activities in March. With apologies that it took so long.

In this post, early March observations of the classified geostationary satellites PAN and Mentor 4 will feature. In a second post following this one, I will report on some non-satellite observations: comet PANSTARRS and a fabulous display of Aurora borealis which I observed from Finland.


PAN and Mentor 4

As I noted on the blog before, weather has been extremely bad here since mid November 2012. Many nights were clouded, we had unusual amounts of snow, and spring set in very late (in fact, only last week).

click image to enlarge

The few clear nights we had, usually coincided with a bright moon in the sky. As wintertime is a bad time for LEO objects at latitude 52N  (the visibility window is very short, restricted to twilight) the focus is on objects in GEO during this season: but that necessitates clear moonless nights....

On the evening of March 4 I did an attempt, which was cut short when clouds and haze moved in. The pictures came out bad, but I did manage to image PAN (2009-047A) and Mentor 4 (2009-001A), as can be seen in the picture above. Mentor 4 is a SIGINT: PAN probably is too.

PAN was moved again in December-January, this time taking up position at 42.5 E close to the commercial telecom sat Nigcomsat 1R.

Since its launch in 2009, this enigmatic satellite has frequently moved, and this is unusual. PAN was stationed at 33.0 E from late 2009 to May 2010 and then was moved to 38.0 E. It was moved again to 49.0 E in December 2010, followed by a move to 44.9 E in the spring of 2011. Then it was relocated to 39.1 E in the summer of 2011 and next moved to 52.5 E somewhere between late October 2011 and January 2012. In May 2012 it was moved back to 38.0 E. In December 2012, it moved to 42.5 E. No doubt it will move again in the future, perhaps in May as December and May are frequently the months the satellite is moved.

Note: the listed positions for PAN are based on privately archived TLE's for the satellite. The TLE source is Mike McCants and the TLE's are based on amateur observations of the satellite, notably by Greg Roberts (S-Africa), Peter Wakelin (UK), Ian Roberts (s-Africa) and me (Netherlands).

The discovery of asteroid 2013 GM21

I am way behind with my reporting on this blog, for which I apologize. I still have satellite observations from early March to report, as well as (somewhat off-topic) observations of comet 2011 L4 PANSTARRS and spectacular Aurora borealis (Northern Lights) from Finland mid March. For various reasons, I did not come to that yet. Maybe coming weekend...

Meanwhile, a short report on my latest asteroid discovery: 2013 GM21, which was published in the DOU MPEC K13-G54 today (Apr 12, 2013: look for object K13G21M).

On  April 6th, I was on my own initiative (and successfully) trying to get follow-up observations on three objects (2013 EZ102, 2013 EB103 and 2013 EC103) which Krisztian Sarneczky and I discovered in the Konkoly survey from MPC 461 (the 60-cm Schmidt of Konkoly, HU) mid-March. I was "remotely" using the 81-cm Schulman telescope of the Mt. Lemon Sky Center (MPC G84) for that, one of the telescopes in the SSO Network.

In the images that should (and did) contain 2013 EZ102, I found two other moving objects. Both were unidentified - i.e., they were not in the MPCOrb asteroid database of the IAU Minor Planet Center and could be new discoveries! So they were submitted to the MPC with the temporary designations LaMa515 and LaMa516.

One of these (LaMa515) turned out to have been observed by another observatory just days before, so that one was not a new discovery: the other observatory alas beat me to it.

click image to enlarge

The second object however, a mag +19.5 to +20 object I temporarily designated LaMa516 moving quite close to 2013 EZ102 in the images, turned out to be truely new: my observations of April 6th were the first! It can be seen in the blink above, which shows you a small part of the April 6th discovery images. 2013 EZ102 is in the images too.

I next obtained new images, based on a very rough search orbit fit, on April 7th, 8th and on April 11th, again using the 81-cm telescope of MPC G84. As a result, it was formally MPEC-ed today by the MPC as 2013 GM21: my second asteroid discovery using a "remote" telescope! And my 69th asteroid discovery in total (and 5th in 2013, the other four being in the Konkoly survey. For a full list of my discoveries see here).

The asteroid is a borderline Maria family main belt asteroid. With H=16.8, it is an estimated 1.5 km large. It has the following orbital elements (source: MPC):

2013 GM21

Epoch 2013 Mar. 29.0 TT = JDT 2456380.5   MPC
M 351.06235              (2000.0) 

n   0.24233744     Peri.   39.90632             
a   2.5479390      Node   164.25356             
e   0.0734092      Incl.   17.12483

q   2.3608968      T       2456417.38101 JDT 

P   4.07           H   16.8 

From 13 observations 2013 Apr. 6-11.

click images to enlarge

As can be seen in the orbital plots, the orbit is well inclined to the ecliptic. I discovered it when it was in opposition and close to perihelion of its orbit, these two factors combining in a maximum brightness for the object. This is basically the same situation as with my earlier discovery 2012 SM58.

Movie: Why the Russian Super Meteor was not related to asteroid 2012 DA14 - explained with the help of an orange

Dutch note: een Nederlandstalige versie van deze video is eerder hier gepost.



Added Note: the reality is slightly more complex than I present it in the video, as objects that graze just past the earth limb are slightly deflected by earth gravitation and can end up on (low) northern latitudes. Latitude 55 N is out of the question though, and as this added detail might make the story too complex I decided to leave it out.

Filmpje: waarom de supermeteoor boven Rusland niets te maken heeft met planetoide 2012 DA14 - uitgelegd met behulp van een sinaasappel

Note to English readers: an English version of the Dutch language video below is posted in a separate post here.




Toegevoegde noot: Het is in werkelijkheid iéts complexer dan ik hier doe voorkomen, omdat een langs de rand van de aarde scherend object door de aardse zwaartekracht iets wordt afgebogen en er zo dus wel fragmenten op (lage) noordelijke breedtegraden terecht kunnen komen. Maar 55 Noord is echt buiten de mogelijkheid, en ik heb dit er daarom maar uit gelaten omdat het anders misschien te complex werd.

On national television about 2012 DA14 and the Russian super meteor

Yesterday was a crazy day, that started as soon as I woke up, opened my e-mail and saw the messages about the Russian super meteor event. Next, my telephone was red-hot from phone calls, and my e-mail and twitter flowed over from private messages by persons and news media seeking information.

I got two TV crews visiting me, plus a radio reporter, and I turned down a couple of other media requests.

At 22:00 (10 pm) Dutch time I was Live in the broadcast of 'Nieuwsuur', a prominent news program on Dutch national television channel Nederland 2. Through a satellite connection, I was interviewed by the news anchors in the studio, while I was standing next to my telescope in my courtyard. The topics were both the Russian event and the 2012 DA14 asteroid fly-by.

 TV van in the street

screenshots from the live Nieuwsuur broadcast

The video (in Dutch) can be seen here. It starts directly with my item.

I was also interviewed by a regional TV and radio station, TV West. The video of that TV appearance (again in Dutch of course) can be viewed here [link fixed: it initially erroneously linked to the Nieuwsuur item]: my item starts at 3:40 in the video.

TV West filming my explanation

Screenshots from the TV West broadcast

Radio reporter interviewing me

[updated] HUGE fireball over Russia this morning! Not 2012 DA14 related.

A HUGE fireball has appeared over Chelyabinsk, Russia, this morning. And with HUGE I mean: HUGE. Apparent brightness rivalling the sun, and very strong sonic booms leading to glass damage and people being wounded by flying glass. This must have been a seizable object entering the atmosphere.

Phil Plait, the "Bad Astronomer" has very good coverage including some amazing videos here, so I will refer to him for imagery and the general story (apart from two I include below: one showing the meteor, the other one the arrival of the shock wave).





Below, I will briefly explain why this fireball cannot have been a fragment of 2012 DA14, the ~50 meter wide asteroid that will pass very close to earth coming evening (Feb 15, 2013).

First of all (and Phil Plait points this out as well), the fireball in Russia came from the wrong direction. Several of the videos show it appearing in the east near the rising sun, coming from a N-NE direction. That is the wrong direction: fragments of 2012 DA14 are on a south-north trajectory.

What is even more important: fragments of 2012 DA14 could never enter the atmosphere as far north as latitude 55 N (Chelyabinsk). Fragments in orbits similar to that of the asteroid, have a theoretical geocentric radiant at declination -81 degrees, i.e. almost at the southern celestial pole. They hence approach earth from due south. This means that the northern hemisphere is out of reach of these fragments: the northern hemisphere represents (as seen from these approaching fragments) the "far side" of the earth.

[video added 18/02/2013]


[added 18/02/2013] In the above video I explain this more visually, with the help of an orange. In reality, it is slightly more complicated than I present it in the video, as objects grazing the earth's limb are actually slightly attracted by earths gravity and can end up a little bit over the line between "front" and "far" side of the earth. Ending up at latitude 55 N is nevertheless out of the question.

The funny thing is that the latitude of Chelyabinsk and the approach direction of 2012 DA14 (and fragments in a swarm around it) are well established facts, even if the trajectory of the Russian fireball is less so at the moment. So it is quite nice that from the encounter geometry with the 2012 DA14 orbit and the latitude of the Russian meteor alone, we can actualy already exclude a connection between the two with a quite strong certainty.

Fragments in 2012 DA14-like orbits and the Russian fireball itself are also too fast to be temporarily captured in earth-orbit, so that is no explanation either.

This fireball was not man-made space junk either. Besides coming from an unlikely direction, it is too fast and much too bright for that.

These are amazing times: the reentry of a Russian rocket stage seen from NW Europe on the evening of the 13th, then this hughe meteoric fireball over Russia this morning, and a close pass of asteroid 2012 DA14 tonight. Wow!

Fireball over NW Europe of the evening of 13 February 2013: Re-entry of a Soyuz r/b

Reports are pouring in of a very long duration, bright fireball near 22:15 CET (21:15 GMT) seen from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Reports indicate 30-40 seconds visibility, and an "explosion" halfway, and some reports indicate sonic booms.

This fireball was with a high degree of certainty the re-entry of a Russian Soyuz 3rd stage, #39083 (2013-007B), the 3rd stage from the Soyuz that launched the Progress cargoship Progress-M 18M towards the ISS on February 11th.

USSTRATCOM issued a TIP message indicating decay at 21:15 +/- 1 m UTC near 49N, 13 E.

Below is a quick map (made using Orbitron) of the trajectory and approximate position of the re-entry.

click map to enlarge

Time, general description and reentry data all fit quite well.

OT - a new telescope and imaging the moon

Since 18 November I have done little in terms of satellite observing, for reasons outlined below. Therefore, a post that is slightly OT - but still astronomical in topic.

Generally bad weather over the past two months - lots of clouds, and even snow mid January - is one primary reason for my inactivity on the satellite observing front. Another is that mid-winter isn't the best period of the year at 52 N due to the "winter blackout" of many objects in LEO. Third, I am occupied these months by a few other things, including the "Super Secret Project" which I obviously can't talk about yet (but is very exciting).

The generally bad weather over December and January meant that I could not yet fully use my new toy. Near the start of December, I obtained myself a new telescope, partly with the proceeds of the Van der Bilt Prize. The telescope is a Celestron C6 Schmidt-Cassegrain (15 cm f=1500) on an SGT Advanced Goto equatorial mount. Here is me showing it off:

For quite a while I wanted a slightly bigger and optically better telescope than the simple Meade ETX-70 and small and very old 4.5" Newton I already had, yet found it just too expensive. The extra money from the Van der Bilt Prize meant it became just feasible for me to finally buy something better.

Since I have no option for a permanent setup and live small, it could not be a very large and heavy setup, so I choose this 6" Schmidt-Cassegrain (the mount is heavier than I expected though). Even though I have not been able to use it extensively yet, I so far like it very much!

Twice in January I could test it out on the moon. Here are some images shot on January 22nd. First, an old-fashioned single shot photograph of the moon disc (C6 prime focus with F6.3 flattener/reducer, and Canon EOS 60D, 1/160s at ISO 200). Seeing was quite mediocre, the air was not quite steady (the image was "wavy" as if reflected on the surface of water):

click image to enlarge

I also used the HD movie capabilities of my Canon EOS 60D to shoot a few short movies, and then stack frames from these movies using Registax. This results in a dramatic increase in detail. The images below are each the result of stacking 200 movie frames, selected out of movie sequences of ~550 frames each, and are my first ever experiments with Registax (which is quite complex to use for a novice):

click images to enlarge

Southern highlands: Clavius and Tycho

Northern part of Mare Imbrium with Sinus Iridium,

Plato and Vallis Alpes

Mare Humorum, Mare Nubium, with Gassendi

and Bullialdus

One of the intended primary goals for this telescope will be to observe asteroid occultations, with the WATEC 902H video camera plus GPS time inserter attached to it.Satellites are not the primary goal of this new instrument.