The military has released video of the spy satellite’s fuel tank exploding upon impact from the missile. w00t!

You can watch it on YouTube, via Fox News, here, or download the military’s video in WMV form here. (Hat tip: SpaceWeather.)

Also, here’s another picture of falling debris from the satellite shoot-down.

A couple of stories about people witnesing re-entering satellite debris, from MSNBC and Space.com.

And, you know that incredible photo of satellite debris & the eclipsed moon that I posted early this morning? Well, it made the local news out in Oregon.

Speaking of the eclipse, here’s an awesome shot of the International Space Station in front of the partially eclipsed Moon!

Check out this stunning eclipse photo, too. It was taken in Hamedan, Iran.

This long-exposure shot is neat, too. More here.

Weird things happen during total lunar eclipses. Two eclipses ago, during totality, the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918. Last night, also during totality, the Navy shot a freakin’ missile at a freakin’ satellite and blew it out of the sky.

Speaking of which: an Oregon-based blogger named Sherry Holub, a.k.a. “scorpy808,” managed, incredibly, to capture a photo of what was almost certainly a piece of that spy satellite burning up on re-entry into the atmosphere — right next to the eclipsed moon in the sky. Here it is:

Wow. Totally awesome. I’m so jealous. :)

(Republished with Holub’s permission. In addition to her LiveJournal blog, she also runs a company called JV Media Design.)

It’s a hit! The missile hit the spy satellite! No further details are available yet. [UPDATE, 12:05 AM: According to the AP, "In a statement announcing that the Navy missile struck the satellite, the Pentagon said, ‘Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours.’ It made no mention of early indications, but a defense official close to the situation said later that officials monitoring the collision saw what appeared to be an explosion, indicating that the fuel tank was hit."]

Folks on the west coast and in Canada: Did you see anything unusual in the sky — like a "swarm of meteors", perhaps?

[UPDATE, 12:25 AM: Blogger “scorpy808″ captured what appears to be a photo of the eclipsed Moon with a piece of re-entering satellite debris right next to it!. OMG! Awesome! (I found this by searching Google Blog Search for the word “satellite” and the phrase “I saw.”) And here is another possible sighting report. Not to mention Lisa’s in comments!]

Back here in the southeast, the only thing unusual in the sky right now is a very reddish moon, which is just starting to show a sliver of white on the lower right edge as it begins to emerge from the Earth’s umbra. As I mentioned below, the clouds eventually cleared and Becky, Loyette and I were able to see it. Well… Loyette may not have seen it, per se, but she was in its presence, anyway. :)

Here’s a photo I took of the eclipse at 10:45 PM:

That’s Saturn at the bottom of the photo, and the star Regulus at the top.

UPDATE: Here’s a wider view, taken at 10:56. The clouds appear orange due to the Greater Knoxville light dome:

Reader Ken Wagner sends along eclipse photos from Nashville. Thanks, Ken! Others’ photos can be found here and here.

…about the eclipse tonight! It’s the last total lunar eclipse until December 2010 — which will be almost two years into the Obama Administration! :)

Visibility map here. Totality goes from 10:01 PM to 10:51 PM EST, with mid-eclipse at 10:26. The partial portion begins at 8:43 PM and ends at 12:09 AM.

UPDATE, 8:44 PM: Here in Knoxville, it’s completely overcast at the moment. Perhaps it’ll clear, but I’m pessimistic about getting to see the last total lunar eclipse of the decade. :(

In a not-really-related story, Brian Williams stated on NBC Nightly News that the weather west of Hawaii has now improved to the point where the military thinks it probably will be able to go ahead with tonight’s satellite shoot-down attempt, around 10:30 PM EST. More here. Apparently Defense Secretary Gates gets to give the final order.

UPDATE, 10:27 PM: Just stepped outside with Becky and Loyette (the latter wrapped up in a blanket, sound asleep) and caught a glimpse of the eclipsed Moon, in between clouds. Yay! Baby’s first eclipse! (She’ll be almost 3 years old when the next one rolls around…)

The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely in Florida this morning, clearing the way for the Navy to proceed with plans to shoot down the errant spy satellite as early as tonight. But those plans could be delayed by weather:

Navy gunners in the Pacific were watching the sea and sky Wednesday,
waiting for perfect conditions to take a kill shot on an errant
satellite 150 miles above them.

They have just a 10-second window to fire, a Pentagon official said,
and may not be able to take their shot on their first opportunity at
10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday.

"It’s not enough to say ‘no,’ but we’re watching the weather," the
official told reporters at the Pentagon. "It’s on the margin."

The cruiser USS Lake Erie will get one 10-second window each of the
next nine or 10 days to fire an interceptor missile that will destroy
the faltering spy satellite before it can tumble to Earth and –
possibly — release a cloud of toxic gas. …

[S]wells in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii [are] running slightly higher than [the] Navy would like.

The National Weather Service forecast 12- to 15-foot seas west of Hawaii Wednesday with a storm developing in the area.

The United States plans to spend up to $60 million to try to
destroy the satellite even though there is only a remote possibility
the satellite could fall to Earth, survive re-entry and spew toxic gas
in a populated area, said James Jeffrey, deputy national security
adviser.

   "The regret factor of not acting clearly outweighed the regret factor of acting," he said.

Either that, or this is a convenient opportunity to get away with doing a missile test, as some have speculated.

Did any readers up in the Northwest (i.e., Washington, Oregon, Idaho or Montana) happen to see the fireball yesterday morning at around 5:30 AM? (Video here; lots of local news articles here). I’d love to see one of those someday…

Speaking of skywatching events, don’t forget about the total lunar eclipse tonight. Mid-totality, at 10:26 PM EST, will be visible all across the 48 contiguous states. And those in the Pacific Northwest may also want to keep a weather eye to the western sky right around then — i.e., approx. 7:30ish local time — because, as I mentioned yesterday, they might be able to see some spy-satellite fragments streaking across the sky. Just call it Fireball Country!

The Navy will try to shoot down the errant spy satellite on Thursday, assuming the Space Shuttle lands as planned on Wednesday.

UPDATE: According to SpaceWeather.com, the attempt will actually be Wednesday night here in North America, which is early Thursday morning Greenwich Mean Time. Here’s what SpaceWeather says:

Rumor has it that the US Navy may make its first attempt to hit USA 193 this Wednesday evening as the satellite passes over the Pacific Ocean. An air traffic advisory warns pilots to avoid a patch of ocean near Maui from 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Hawaii time on Feb. 20th (0230 - 0500 UT, Feb. 21st). This would center the missile strike on the darkness of Wednesday’s lunar eclipse and possibly render reentering debris visible from the west coast of North America.

So there you go. From the linked map, it appears that the actual shoot-down attempt will originate a bit to the southwest of the Hawaiian islands, and will occur shortly before 5:30 PM Hawaii time (7:30 Pacific, 10:30 Eastern). If the satellite were to continue on its orbital path, its track would take it up over southern British Columbia a few minutes later, so assuming that any re-entering debris roughly follows the momentum of the satellite’s track (which seems like it would be the case), the Pacific Northwest may have the best chance of seeing re-entering debris tomorrow night.

Incidentally, about that total lunar eclipse: mid-eclipse is at 10:26 PM EST. Here’s a map showing the eclipse’s visibility. Practically all of North America can see it.

Anyway, back to the spy satellite: according to this site, a second air-traffic advisory suggests the military has plans for a second shoot-down attempt Thursday night — same time, same place — if the Wednesday attempt fails.

(more…)

Sky-watchers in the southeast and southwest, don’t forget about the ISS/Shuttle flyover tonight.

UPDATE: We drove out to a spot with a clear western horizon and watched for the ISS and Shuttle. But we only saw one dot in the sky, not two. I guess they must still have been really close together, so they weren’t distinguishable.

According to Reuters, the scheduled undocking between the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station is now set for 4:26 AM EST on Monday. That’s almost 24 hours later than the 6:35 AM Sunday undocking time that’s stated in master flight plan.

This means the aforeblogged Sunday-night sky show will be far less spectacular than I had hoped. The Shuttle and ISS will both be visible, of course, but they’ll be indistinguishable from one another to the naked eye, appearing as a single dot rather than two points of light trailing each other across the sky. They won’t look much different than a standard ISS-only flyover, which, while still pretty cool, is a commonplace occurrence.

Monday night is a different story, though. Alas, here in Knoxville, the view won’t be nearly as good as it would have been Sunday if the schedule had stayed in place (though it’s really a moot point anyway, since it didn’t look like the weather was going to cooperate), but it’ll be a spectacular view in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and a bunch of other places. Here are Monday night’s flyover tracks, courtesy of Heavens Above:

Again, for local details, go to Heavens Above.

If the current mission schedule for the Space Shuttle Atlantis remains unchanged, much of the continental U.S. will have an opportunity to watch the Shuttle and the International Space Station fly overhead Sunday night as two distinct, bright dots, moving briskly across the evening sky in tandem — two unmistakable beacons of the human presence in space. Just over 12 hours removed from their Sunday-morning undocking, they should be a very cool sight to behold.

Trust me: even if you’re not into dorky stuff like Iridium flares, this is well worth a trip outside at the proper time, if the sky is clear. (And you don’t need to be in a low-light-pollution location to see them. They’re very bright. So long as you’re not standing, like, directly under a streetlight or something, you should be able to see them, even from downtown in a major city. Basically, if you can see Venus, you can see the ISS and Shuttle.)

There are two viewing opportunities for the U.S. on Sunday evening: the first between 6:57 and 7:04 PM EST — visible from much of the eastern half of the country — and the second from 8:27 to 8:35 PM EST (that’s 6:27-6:35 MST) — visible from most of the Mountain Time Zone, and parts of the Central and Western time zones as well.

To find out if and when the flyovers will be visible from your particular location, go to Heavens-Above and select your location. When you get to the "Main Menu," click on "10 day predictions for: ISS" and look for the "17 Feb" entry (or entries) on the list. Click on it (or them), and you’ll get all your local details, including precisely when and where in the sky to look. (The Shuttle will either be just behind the ISS or just ahead of it; I’m not sure which.)

Basically, though, the closer you are to the black lines in these graphics, the better your potential view is, provided it’s after local sunset when the flyover occurs:

Don’t pay much attention to the red circles; they just show the extent of potential satellite visibility, down to 10 degrees above the horizon, from the central location on each map. The circles would look different from other spots and at other times along the satellite’s path. So what you really want to focus on is the black line, and how close you are to it. The closer you are, the brighter and more directly overhead the satellites will be. (Again, the other issue is the timing of sunset; the Pacific coast won’t get a good view because the sun will still be up.)

But really, don’t bother trying to speculate based on those maps — seriously, just go to Heavens-Above and get the details for your specific location. :)

Here in Knoxville, we’re pretty darn close to the black line for the earlier flyover, and as a result, we get a really great view: the ISS will have a magnitude of -2.1 (lower magnitudes are brighter; -2.1 is brighter than anything in the night sky except Venus and the Moon) and will reach an altitude of 67 degrees at 6:59:54 PM EST. Oh, and it’ll pass directly through Orion about 35 seconds later.

(Unfortunately, the weather forecast for Knoxville looks less than promising at the moment. I hope it changes!)

The view is even better from Nashville, which is almost literally right on the center line, so there the ISS will reach an max altitude of 85° — and a stunning magnitude of -2.5 — at 5:59:23 PM CST.

A few other potential locations of interest to Irish Trojan readers: Phoenix (magnitude -1.9, altitude 39° in the NE sky at 6:30:38 MST), Denver (magnitude -0.3, altitude 28° in the SW sky at 6:30:37 MST), South Bend (magnitude -0.6, altitude 33° in the SW sky at 6:58:28 EST), Memphis (magnitude -2.1, altitude 46° in the NE sky at 5:59:00 CST), Atlanta (magnitude -2.5, altitude 74°, almost directly overhead — right near Mars — at 7:00:14 EST), Indianapolis (magnitude -1.3, altitude 45° in the SW sky at 6:58:49 EST), St. Louis (magnitude -2.5, altitude 88°, directly overhead at 5:58:22 CST, which is 17 minutes after local sunset), Washington, D.C. (a comparatively dim magnitude 0.4, altitude 19 in the SW sky at 7:00:17 EST; Virginia suburbs will be marginally better).

Oh, and in Southern California, although both of the flyovers mentioned here will occur before local sunset, you may be able to catch a glimpse in the southwestern sky (max altitude 19°) of the next flyover, over the Pacific Ocean, at 7:05 PM PST. The magnitude will only be 0.3, though, a little dimmer than Mars, so light pollution could be a problem.

Anyway… all of this is subject to change, particularly the precise schedule details, if the ISS’s orbit gets tweaked a bit between now and then. Also, the undocking schedule could change; if it’s delayed, and thus the Shuttle is still docked on Sunday night, then it and the ISS will appear as a single bright dot moving across the sky, which, while still pretty cool, is a much more commonplace occurrence.

However, assuming the undocking schedule remains relatively unchanged, I highly encourage everybody in range of this flyover to check it out Sunday night.

Remember the spy satellite that’s falling out of orbit and is expected to hit Earth soon? Well, President Bush wants to shoot it out of the sky:

The Pentagon, under
orders from President Bush, is planning to shoot down a broken spy
satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March, the White House
said Thursday.

U.S. officials said
that the option preferred by the administration will be to fire a
missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before
it enters Earth’s atmosphere. …

The disabled satellite is
expected to hit the Earth the first week of March. Officials said the
Navy would likely shoot it down before then, using a special missile
modified for the task.

It’s interesting that they want to shoot it down before re-entry — which will create inevitable controversy, given that we condemned the Chinese for doing something similar last year — when, according to satellite expert James Lewis, another option would be to try and use the Missile Defense System to destroy the satellite just as it begins to re-enter the atmosphere. That would be far less controversial (and would eliminate the "space junk" problem), but I’m guessing the odds of success are lower. In other words, reading the tea leaves, it certainly doesn’t sound like the government has much faith in the Missile Defense System, at least as regards its ability to pull off a mission like this one.

Anyway…

(more…)

I somehow missed this, but the Space Shuttle Atlantis blasted off yesterday for a planned 12-day mission. The schedule calls for Atlantis to dock with the International Space Station tomorrow, and remain docked until 6:35 AM EST next Saturday, February 16.

That timetable creates the potential for some awesome spaceship-gazing opportunities in the continental U.S. next weekend, as the ISS is scheduled to make three separate evening passes over our neck of the woods shortly after undocking — on the 16th around 6:40 PM and again around 8:15 PM, and on the 17th around 7:00 PM. If past experience serves, the ISS and Shuttle will at that point be visible as separate dots traveling side-by-side through the sky, and will be very, very cool to see. You can bet I’ll be keeping you updated as those viewing opportunities get closer, assuming the schedule holds.

To find out when you can see the Shuttle and ISS from your location (including some more immediate viewing opportunities while they’re docked), as well as other satellites, Iridium flares, and so forth, go to Heavens Above.

Dr. Jeff Masters: “The death toll from the 2008 Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak makes it the deadliest tornado outbreak in the past 23 years.”

And it’s the deadliest tornado outbreak this early on the calendar since 1949.

The death toll is at least 54.

As Dr. Masters’s map demonstrates, East Tennessee was spared. By the time the thunderstorms got here around 8:00 AM this morning, they were producing only torrential rains, gusty winds and lightning — nothing too terrible. Later in the day, after the cold front that produced the storms had moved through, we got (and are still getting) some pretty strong winds on the back side of the system, causing the Tennessee River to look rather choppy from the parking garage where I park for work:

But yeah, no tornadoes or anything similarly devastating, thank goodness.

In West Tennessee (see also here) and Middle Tennessee, of course, it’s an entirely different story.

Holy crap.

Earlier, 86 people were injured in Jackson, and there were reportedly fatalities; don’t know how many yet. Two Union University dorms were almost completely destroyed. This is getting totally overshadowed by the election (which it also affected), but it is a HUGE deal.

UPDATE: More here from the Memphis paper.

What an absolutely nutty night if you’re working for a newspaper in Tennessee, particularly West or Middle Tennessee.

Every single post on the homepage right now is about presidential politics. Ick. Overkill. As Obama might say, time for a change!

Let’s see… how about a pretty picture of an Iridium flare?

I took that from a random roadside spot in Loudon last Monday. My parents were in town, and I wanted to show them what an Iridium flare is, so we drove out and watched it. We also dragged Jay and Ashley out to watch, so they got to meet my parents. The flare itself was somewhat less impressive than I expected, given its predicted negative-7 magnitude, but it made for a very nice photo, especially with the thin, wispy clouds all around. Here’s the wider view.

Previous Iridium flare posts can be found here, here, here and here. Explanations of the flares can be found here and here.

Unless you’re a serious dork like me, Iridium flares probably aren’t worth a drive out to some random spot — but if one happens to take place where you are, it’s well worth a look up to the sky in the proper spot at the proper time. Heavens-Above can tell you when flares will happen near you. (It also has predictions for lots of other stuff, including when and where you can see that decaying spy satellite pass overhead, though you’ll need a darkish sky for that.)