Launch to splashdown vids from the SRBs quite cool to watch.
Interesting - there seems to be something hot falling off the SRB into the ocean just seconds before splashdown. Maybe some fuel/ashes/whatever junk is the propellant made out of.
Sorry to go off at a bit of a tangent, but I've just returned from a friend's house in Birkenhead. As it was a nice night, we were stood outside chatting about this and that, when we spotted a light in the sky, moving west-east, traversing the sky in, ooh, about 2 minutes (but that's very approximate, neither of us having the presence of mind to time it.) It was orange in colour, and what we noticed was that it was variable. almost like it was on fire (no visible smoke-trail, though). As we watched, another appeared, same path, and a third. My friend then went indoors to get his camera (plus zoom lens) and just as he came back out, another appeared, followed about twenty seconds later by a fifth. We couldn't see any details through the camera, just an orange blob, notably with no aircraft lights that we could see. A short while later, another one came across, then a seventh. Then I left to come home, it being about 12:30. Total time, about 30 minutes. Through all of this, we could hear no sound other than (little) local traffic and the two aircraft which flew over at height, showing lights as per usual.
Thoughts on the matter: They were too fast (from our vantage-point) to be high-altitude aircraft, and too quiet to be low ones. They were (I think) far too slow to be meteors, and a quick internet search shows very little at the moment anyway. They were altogether the wrong colour for aircraft (but the northern horizon was bright, being Liverpool, so maybe we were seeing reflections), and irregularly lit. Four and five were too close together for safe air traffic control. Other aircraft were visible in the sky. All followed the same path, almost exactly west-to-east. They weren't all at the same speed, but fairly close; also, as they crossed the sky, at least two appeared to slow down. They almost all dimmed as they crossed; one effectively vanishing.
Both my friend and myself are scientifically-minded, and certainly I'm not looking for any non-mundane explanation, but it's got me a bit stumped. Anyone got any ideas?
Sadly, despite the fact we had a camera, no pics. I asked my friend if he had any binoculars, for us to verify that they were aircraft with lights, and he said no, but he had a camera with zoom lens. With the naked eye, they looked like orange blobs. With the camera, they looked like larger orange blobs; still no discernable detail. It was late; we were tired. What can I say? I did though, at one point, get an aircraft and a blob in frame at the same time, and they didn't look at all similar.
It could well have been a satellite; it would match the "burning" look they had, and maybe also why they got dimmer as they passed overhead. They were all on the same trajectory, which would also match, but the closest two were about 20 seconds apart, and the biggest gap while I was watching was a couple of minutes; I'd have expected them to be clustered together, diverging, or both.
No longer quite as stumped about the orange firey lights. Chinese lanterns, as I am told the BBC are reporting them as. Makes some sense, and would match most of the observed phenomena. Case closed!
Oh, by the way, has anyone else tried the Space Shuttle special edition of X-Plane for the iPhone? You get to watch take-off, attempt to dock with the ISS, then perform a 12-minute (mainly instrument-based) manual re-entry.
Kelloggs wrote:No longer quite as stumped about the orange firey lights. Chinese lanterns, as I am told the BBC are reporting them as. Makes some sense, and would match most of the observed phenomena. Case closed!
I almost suggested this actually - I was fiddling around with my telescope in my second "proper" night the other evening as a beginning astronomer when there was a whoosh and one of these shot over the garden, giving me the severe willies in the process!
Hmm. Apparently, the local Coastguard is reporting them as "meteors". Which is odd, because I don't believe we're due anything significant before the beginning of July...
