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Nov 21, 2008

Sentinel all-sky camera spots new meteors!

NASA Begins Hunt for New Meteor Showers details how NASA astronomer and meteor expert, Bill Cooke, working at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, received an email sent him by his Sentinel camera showing an amazing meteor shower over Huntsville pre-dawn on Sept 9, 2008.

The whole spetacular show, including over two dozen fantastic fireballs, was recorded by the Sentinel, an all-sky camera located on the grounds of the Marshall SF Center. Good thing the Sentinel "never gets sleepy" because dim meteors had previously been sighted around Sept 9 originating from the constellation Perseus, but with showiness lacking, the shower had not been observed with eagerness - had been rather dissed, in fact.

Click the link for audios, videos, and full length movies of the fireballs which were brighter than Jupiter or Venus, a sparkly pair of planets you may have noticed after sunset this month, but be sure to watch out for them Nov 30 and Dec 1, as the Moon joins them in a harmonic trio.

Since the outburst in September, a second camera has been set up 100 miles away at the Walker County Science Center in north Georgia so that the meteors' trajectories may be backtracked to find the as-yet unknown parent comet...kind of an astronomical paternity test!

"With two cameras, we can gather the data we need to calculate orbits," says Cooke.

Then on Oct 1, 2008, a meteor exploded over Huntsville creating a fireball effect so you may wish to check out the movie showing the fireball over Hunstville and over Georgia.

Results of this research are expected to help NASA concerning the many meteor flashes which impact the Moon quite often so this will be important information for the time when NASA returns a man to the Moon.

Because no one wants a fireball landing on his noggin!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's exciting news. Jude, have you seen this month's National Geographic? The cover article is up your alley, about how our night sky is disturbed by light pollution. Amazing celestial photos!

Jude Cowell said...

Hi and thanks, Layla, will go check it out now.

A few videos have been published at Dreamyfish Art of fish, otters, etc, (plus, a puppy cam) but maybe a celestial video will be available for posting here from NG.

Hope you & yours are staying snug in this November chill,

jude