(meteorobs) Fuel dump clouds
Bruce McCurdy
bmccurdy at telusplanet.net
Wed Sep 1 16:04:44 EDT 2004
We saw something like this from the Observatory at Edmonton Space &
Science Centre's a few years ago, a diffuse glow not dissimilar from the
Andromeda Galaxy which was by coincidence only a few degrees away from M31
itself. One of our members (Larry Wood) was actually trying to spot the
galaxy naked-eye -- which can only be done from that urban site on the very
best of nights -- and found this rather brighter patch instead. I suspect
Larry spotted it fairly early in its development. Between Observatory
volunteers, a few members of the public and judicious use of the telephone,
within a few minutes a whole bunch of us were watching this "cloud" very
gradually drift against the sky over a period of many minutes. Slow enough
that the drift of the stars had to be factored in to any calculation of the
object's actual position in 3D space.
One of our local astronomy buffs interpreted the thing as a tiny
undiscovered comet which was passing very close to Earth, thus the
relatively rapid movement of a degree every few minutes. It sounds silly in
retrospect, but that neatly describes what we were seeing for a while. It
was slightly cone-shaped, with a brightish stellar nucleus at the focus.
Later as the contrail dissipated into larger and fainter the fuel dump
explanation was postulated. Upon further investigation we found it
corresponded with some sort of spy satellite launched a short time earlier
from White Plains, New Mexico, into what is called a Molniya orbit (highly
inclined at ~63.4°, and extremely elliptical, with an apogee that does not
precess but stays put over a very specific -- and presumably strategic ---
spot. Molniya satellites have a 717.8-minute orbit, almost exactly half of a
sidereal day.) So from our perspective at +53.6° N., this thing was still
going pretty much straight up when it dumped its unneeded fuel. A bizarre
observation which I remember clearly years later.
regards, Bruce
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