Hi all, Yesterday night, at 04:10 UTC on June 24, we were 10 people around a campfire at home celebrating our national holiday (St-Jean-Baptiste or Fete nationale). I retreated to a darker place to ... and noticed a relatively bright cloud under the Milky Way in Pegasus (aprox. coord. RA 22h40 dec +13). Our sky was clear and very dark, the Milky Way was very easy to see and this cloud had about the same brightness. It was 3 to 4 degrees in length and reminded me of the fuel dump clouds I've observed in the past. I immediately thought it was from the Delta 2 rocket that just launched a GPS sat. I asked a few people to confirm my observation and they saw it easily. It stayed visible for over 10 minutes and slowly drifted eastward while dissipating. Today I checked the orbits for the GPS launch objects and neither was in that vicinity at that moment. I checked with mccants.tle and could not find a candidate. Does anyone have an idea ? The shape was elongated and aligned roughly parallel to the celestial equator. It looked like a diffuse comet tail. If this cloud was from a fuel dump or a rocket burn, I was very fortunate to see it, thanks to my bladder... :-) Dan -- Daniel Deak representant, projet spatial Starshine L'Avenir, Quebec COSPAR site 1747 : 45.7275°N, 72.3526°W, 191 m., UTC-5:00 Site en francais sur les satellites: French-language satellite web site : http://www.obsat.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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