Meteor Shower Alert

[Hardrock69]

I will post an image that is a bit unusual. Went outside about 5:30 or so. Starting to get light out. Got my camera and stuff and brought it inside. Looked through the images.

Apparently I caught an image of a small meteor at 5:17 AM. As I was doing 20-second exposures, the sky seems brighter than it actually was, due to the accumulation of light over 20 seconds.

Anyway, I cropped it at about 1/4 the size of the entire image:

[PETE'S BROTHER]

thought hr might like this

http://video.yahoo.com/editorspicks-12135647/featured-24306389/the-tempest-milky-way-26434946.html#crsl=%252Feditorspicks-12135647%252Ffeatured-24306389%252Fthe-tempest-milky-way-26434946.html

[Hardrock69]

Saw that! Really cool!

If you wanna see more time-lapse video of the Milky Way (which are sort of scary as they truly give you a feeling of the fact we are just a speck of dirt hanging out in an eternity of nothingness), go to www.timescapes.org and check out their user forums.

Ugh...I just now went to check it out and got this error message, so you will have to try back later most likely:

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

But there is a sub-forum there that is for users to show their work, and there are many videos similar to that one.

Check this vimeo page out:

http://vimeo.com/16369165

[VAiN]

Picture of one from the International Space Centre.

So this got me thinking - what's stopping the space station from getting pelted?

[Hardrock69]

Good question.

Found this:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wstf/laboratories/hypervelocity/mmod.html

Radar.

Large objects can be detected from the ground or from the space station, and the station is moved out of the way.

The space station and the shuttle are designed to take hits from objects too small to detect from radar and still survive.

......................................…
...Larger particles (objects greater than 10-cm in diameter) are being tracked and catalogued by USSPACECOM radar. Spacecraft and satellites can avoid collisions by maneuvering around the larger debris. For example, when a space shuttle is in orbit, the USSPACECOM regularly examines the trajectories of orbital debris to identify possible close encounters. If a catalogued object is projected to come within a few kilometers of the space shuttle, it will normally maneuver away from the object.

Particles less than 1 mm in diameter are not tracked by radar. Fortunately, small particles pose less of a catastrophic threat but they do cause surface abrasions and microscopic holes to spacecraft and satellites.

The greatest challenge is medium size particles (objects with a diameter between 1 mm to 10 cm) because they are not easily tracked and are large enough to cause catastrophic damage to spacecraft and satellites.

Why simulate particle impacts on spacecraft?
Spacecraft must be designed to withstand hypervelocity impacts by untrackable particles. Conducting hypervelocity impacts on spacecraft and satellite components assesses the risk of orbital debris impacting operating spacecraft and satellites. Developing new materials and designs from HVI impact data provides a better understanding to protect spacecraft and satellites from the debris in the space environment.

One concept of spacecraft shielding recently developed, termed multishock, uses several layers of lightweight ceramic fabric to act as "bumpers," which repeatedly shock a projectile to such high energy levels that it melts or vaporizes before it can penetrate a spacecraft's walls. Lightweight shields based on this concept are used on the International Space Station (ISS)....

[VAiN]

Good question.

Found this:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/wstf/lab...city/mmod.html

Cool! Thanks... now i feel slightly smarter...

[ashstralia]

a few thousand kph. that's almost impossible to predict.

[Hardrock69]

Not almost. It IS impossible to predict.

With that Space Station in orbit, it is like a Cosmic Crapshoot.

[Little Texan]

Not to mention all of the space junk floating around up there.

[Seshmeister]

Riding on the ISS looks cool...

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[SunisinuS]

Not almost. It IS impossible to predict.

With that Space Station in orbit, it is like a Cosmic Crapshoot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBmgZv6YAxE

[fifth element]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBmgZv6YAxE

lol...

[Seshmeister]

Not to mention all of the space junk floating around up there.

The ESA Space Debris Accumulation represents the junk putted in the space from 1957 through 2000. According to ESA’s resident space debris expert, Walter Flury, the 10,000 pieces of space litter catalogued at the end of 2003 break into the following categories:

* 41% — miscellaneous fragments

* 22% — old spacecraft

* 13% — mission related objects

* 7% — operational spacecraft

* 7% — rocket bodies

It means that there’s 93% pure junk and only 7% useful satellites circling the earth…