This evening, NASA launched a Black Brant Rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia in order to attempt to create an artificial noctilucent cloud from a point roughly 100 miles east of Wallops and at an altitude of about 170 miles. I had alerted my television audience last night on News 12 about the launch and posted a blog about it both at the News 12 site and also at the Hayden Planetarium. I wasn't exactly sure what we would see from the New York Tri-State Area, but my wife, Renate and I were on the lookout, directing our attention toward an area about 20 to 30 degrees above the southern horizon. Our location was Putnam Valley, NY, about 50 miles north of Manhattan. Skies were perfectly clear with excellent transparency. The Black Brant Rocket lifted off from wallops on schedule at 7:46 p.m. EDT Six minutes later at 7:52 p.m. my wife and I, saw a brilliant object, of at least magnitude -3 to -4, displaying a wide, fan-shaped tail . . . like a comet . . . appearing above the Teapot asterism in Sagittarius. The "tail" was pointing downward and gradually lengthened to about 10 or 15-degrees and widened to about 5 or 10 degrees over a span of about 30 seconds. It was all so quick! The "head" of the comet (which was the rocket's fourth stage) rapidly faded out and the "tail" gradually faded over the next minute or so into the background of the sky. I should note that my southern sky suffers from considerable light pollution, so the residual glow probably disappeared more quickly as opposed to a completely dark sky. Even with 7X binoculars, it was difficult to discern after about a minute or so. It was very impressive . . . albeit short-lived. I'm sure many people along the US East Coast were surprised by this strange sight! -- joe rao ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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