On Monday 31 August 2009 22:19, Christian F. Ackermann wrote: > Location of observation: Mannheim, Germany +49.5055 -8.4712 > Time of observation: Saturday August 29 2009, 20:30 local time (18:30 > UTC; according to my wife ± 10 minutes because it was already too dark > to read her watch precisely). > Looking straight up, approximately at the zenith, there was a bright > white star-like spot that did not scintillate and was clearly in the > negative magnitude range. It didn't appear as bright as Jupiter did that > night (-2.8 mag) against a black sky but against the civil twilight sky > it appeared maybe half that bright. I could observe the object for > several minutes (2 to 5) and during that time I could not notice any > movement (I did not have visible references like a roof or other stars > in close vicinity to that object) or change of brightness. Finally I > looked up again and the object was gone. I checked the sky periodically > for 5 to 10 minutes after that but it did not appear again. > What you have observed was a weather balloon. This time of the year the illumination is just right for your location to see this phenomenon. Every day such a balloon is launched some 100 km away from your place at 16:45 UT and depending on the wind it may drift toward you. At 18:30 UT the sky is already dark enough and the balloon high enough to see it. I had a spectacular view of it yesterday (31-AUG-09) through a scope with 60x magnification. It appeared with about 1 arcmin diameter and there was a specular reflection at one spot. At 18:37:01 UT it exploded having by now reached an altitude of probably some 35 km or so. I could clearly see the debris flying into different directions. One larger part (the instruments?) was coming down faster. I think you can look for this balloon for another two weeks or so. Gerhard HOLTKAMP Darmstadt, Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Sep 01 2009 - 17:07:09 UTC