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Ant103
Good evening.

During the night from the 25 to the 26th of December (this month), some observers have seen a "triangle" in the sky.
Link to the topic on the most famous astronomy forum of the France : http://www.astrosurf.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001888.html

And a quick traduction of the first post :
QUOTE
[in the south of France]The night yesterday, 25th december 2006, at the middle of the night, I observed a strange thing...
I began to take my first photography on M81 galaxy when I've remarked a non-observed phenomena before this.
At the left of Orion, at the top of Pi Orionis in the Orion shield, stands a perfect isocel triangle with hard edges (vapor consistence...). It luminosity was equivalent to a persitent track made by a big meteor.
This form, around 4° sized, stayed 2 or 3 minutes with the same brightness and the "triangle" began to dilated himself from East to West but not from North to South. During its enlargment, its brightness began to fall and this form slowly disapear and wasn't visible one quarter of hour later.
I hope that other guys have seen this thing too...

If anybody have an hypothesis?


A drawing of the scene :


This phenomena was seen from the Alpes Bavaroises and the Forêt-Noire by other observers.

Hypothesis formulated :
- a meteor rest but the altitude of this may have to be produce at very high altitude to be see from very different point in the same area of the sky (near Orion).
- a satellite ergols explusion?
- a rocket?

That's why I post this in this section because it can concern a engine around the earth.

All information are welcome wink.gif.
djellison
You'll have to help me with the French.

Did this appear for one night, or multiple nights? How long did it last - how bright was it and a lot of the links on that link you give seem dead.

If I had to guess - I'd go for venting from a discarded upper stage.
Ant103
One night, during 15 minutes. I have no information about the brightness but the drawing show how it was (but you say that the links I give are dead. From my "side" the run correctly).
djellison
15 mins - I'd say it's almost certainly a 'dump' of some sort - was the 'source' moving across the sky - if so, how quickly?

Doug
Ant103
The source has a form of a triangle. It didn't move but the size of the object go to be bigger and bigger in the East-West direction, and its brightness lower in the same time. The speed was very low by follow the observations...
djellison
Very slow speed would suggest a very high altitude orbit - and actually - that position is not too far from equatorial, thus perhaps it was a burn or the expiring of a spacecraft in geostationary orbit.
PhilCo126
Astrotreff, a German website also spoke about it and observers were convinced it was either gas dumped by a satellite or a triangular view of a meteor shower...
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (djellison @ Dec 30 2006, 10:17 PM) *
Very slow speed would suggest a very high altitude orbit - and actually - that position is not too far from equatorial, thus perhaps it was a burn or the expiring of a spacecraft in geostationary orbit.


Doug:

Slow speed = High altitude - or the object's track was along the observer's line of sight.

o It could be a controlled dump of fuel etc
o It could be an engine burn
o It could be an explosive rupture of a spent stage

Bob Shaw
Ant103
The problem is that the observers were separated about 600 km and the object was observed in the same portion of the sky. It's as if there no paralax effect...
djellison
600km compared to 35,7890 km is little to no parallax anyway. Compared to Geostationary, given the Lat., 600km is probably more like 300 km in the N/S direction from the perspective of a geostationary satellite - the sort of parallax that a human eye would see at 10 metres or so.

Doug
John Flushing
I visited www.freetranslation.com. (Computer translation so you know it's bad). Instead of posting the entire thread directly to this forum, I created a page on my personal website for those who wish to view the translation.

http://www.freewebs.com/the-raccoon-in-the...ionofthread.htm
Bob Shaw
John:

The translations are quite charming - a broken URL doesn't walk, it appears ('il ne marche pas' in the origional, I assume) - and UMSF is 'Unmanned Spaceflight, a famous forum of fascinated spatial conquète...'

I detect a lack of Lipovitan-D in the posts, though...

Bob Shaw
Pedro_Sondas
Few hours before:

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0612/25glonass/
Ant103
Bob : what is "Lipovitan-D"? wink.gif

Pedro : thanks wink.gif
Myran
QUOTE
Ant103 wrote: Bob : what is "Lipovitan-D"?


I think its one counterpart to 'Red Bull' in Japan, the term became one in-joke here on this forum during the Hyabasa asteroid encounter. smile.gif

But Im happy to see it turned out to be one rather easily indentification of a Glonass launch, instead of other kinds of triangular speculation that have gotten too much attention on the airwaves.
Perhaps those also were caused by launches elsewhere and the story grew by each retelling.

And yes, Happy New year all!
Ant103
I have reading the article given by Pedro and it's strongly probable that it was the last stage of the Proton launcher who given the final impulsion to the 3 satellites to the geostationnary orbit.
I'm waiting for reaction in the french forum to confirm if it can match to the description wink.gif.
djellison
"the correct orbit about 12,000 miles high with an inclination of around 64.8 degrees."

That's not what you were seing in my opinion - the position you say was near equatorial and much slower moving than 12,000 miles altitude.

Doug
BrianJ
Hello,
just did a quick run on Orbiter using Celestrak's TLE's for the Glonass satellites.

The image below is the view from Paris and Berlin overlayed, at 23:50 GMT 25/12/2006 (time of spacecraft separation). The grey squares indicate the area where I would expect to see the spacecraft.



Would seem to confirm it is the Glonass launch.

Cheers,
BrianJ

P.S. Happy New Year to all on the UMSF forum smile.gif
djellison
Sweet - problem solved smile.gif

Doug
Littlebit
QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 2 2007, 08:29 AM) *
Sweet - problem solved smile.gif

Doug

Awful 'dirty' burn though - is this a solid propellant rocket?
Bob Shaw
QUOTE (Littlebit @ Jan 5 2007, 03:17 PM) *
Awful 'dirty' burn though - is this a solid propellant rocket?


No - liquid. It's probably down to lighting - and may not actually have been a burn as such, as it could have been a fuel/oxidiser dump (planned or not). It does highlight the ever-growing amount of garbage out there, though!


Bob Shaw
nprev
Yeah... huh.gif ...something's got to give there, and soon. Not trying to be ecologically extreme here, but it'll be a sad day when a major mission gets zorched prematurely by a piece of debris. The overall discipline of booster design needs to begin considering disposal in more detail (preferably big, burnable chunks)...
Ant103
I haven't check this topic since more a week. I thank Brian J for his contribution. The problem is solved.

Thanks to all smile.gif
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