Meteor shower

[POLO]

Guy's verified the sky this week,maybe with will appear a meteor shower. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/s....html

[cohocarl]

I saw a good one the other day driving into work, but it's been cloudy out the last two nights here.

[Pablo1669]

pretty much at the end of the story, they say Satellites are in more danger from "man-made space junk"makes me wonder what that means, and how enough "junk" can get up there

[POLO]

"man-made space junk"makes me wonder what that means, and how enough "junk" can get up there All the debris that let a shuttle,the boosters let when the shuttle enter in space zone.Can be lot's of junk left of this.

[rasermon]

There is more than 3,000 items of space trash tagged to the US and 2,500 from the countries of the former Soviet Union. A few years ago, engineers inspecting a space shuttle after its return from orbit discovered that a speck of paint which had flaked off another, unknown terrestrial spacecraft had penetrated the shuttle's windscreen. The windscreen is eight inches thick. The speck of paint had penetrated five inches. No wonder the shuttle, when in orbit, flies with extreme caution - upside down and backwards. US Space Command is now tracking more than 8,000 pieces of human-made space junk in orbit around earth. Also, here is a nice Java app that shows all the satellites in orbit. http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679....htmlShortcuts. Shift+Click. Zoom In. Ctrl+Click. Zoom Out. Click on satellite. show trace. Click in list. show trace. Drag. rotate in 3d.

[kostby]

It's clearing tonight, so I might get out for an hour or so but the moon is up already. I think Friday is supposed to be the best night for viewing.I sat out in the Vibe (with the moonroof open of course) a couple of nights ago looking for northern lights, but never saw anything. A couple months ago for the Perseid(?) meteor shower I saw about 20 an hour, only 5 miles from town. I never captured any images because the video and digital camera field of view just isn't wide enough. I set my digital camera on a tripod to do time-lapse capture to my computer every 60 seconds, and only caught one passing airplane!

[AKLGT]

awww. only an airplane, eh? that's too bad. don't think we can see them from here... oh well. would be cool i think!

[AKLGT]

you guys got the northern lights last week wasn't it? rasermon posted it!

[AKLGT]

same here. only on really clear nights and everyone's lights are off.... glow from anchorage fades them out. but fairbanks is one of the best locations in the world to see them when they are out. last winter i saw them and boy were they amazing up there!

[redlava]

Quote, originally posted by rasermon »There is more than 3,000 items of space trash tagged to the US and 2,500 from the countries of the former Soviet Union. A few years ago, engineers inspecting a space shuttle after its return from orbit discovered that a speck of paint which had flaked off another, unknown terrestrial spacecraft had penetrated the shuttle's windscreen. The windscreen is eight inches thick. The speck of paint had penetrated five inches. No wonder the shuttle, when in orbit, flies with extreme caution - upside down and backwards. US Space Command is now tracking more than 8,000 pieces of human-made space junk in orbit around earth. Little things like that can do a lot of damage when the shuttle orbits at something like 12,000 miles per hour.