Galt's Gulch

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  • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 2 months ago
    During the 90s me dino was on a prison tower when night turned into what appeared to be as bright as a sunny day for a couple of seconds.
    Hearing a rumble from the direction of Birmingham, my first thought was the city had been nuked perhaps by terrorists. Nothing followed bright followed a "preliminary flash" so I figured something else had happened.
    I called the shift office and said, since I'm supposed to report anything unusual, I just saw night turn into day for two seconds.
    The shift sergeant made a wisecrack about a UFO and hung up.
    Me dino was vindicated though. Officers outside on the Southside blacktop for the dorms saw a whirling meteor shoot across the sky. I missed that due to having a roof over my head.
    Next day the local TV news reported astronomers telling them that meteor was no bigger than a human fist.
    I found that hard to believe. Maybe that meteor was traveling super fast.
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    • Posted by $ nickursis 6 years, 2 months ago
      Most shooting stars are just a grain. The bolides are a little bigger and lose a lot of mass on the way down. That mass is being converted into light and heat by the friction, so for a bright ball like the one in Michigan, it takes a good fist sized or bigger rock. A lot will get so hot that when they hit real thick air, just shatter like they hit a wall.
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      • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 2 months ago
        Me dino would be off-and-on assigned to a tower between 1982 through 2003 and I worked all three shifts at one time or another.
        After dark during second shift work in the mid- 80s, I saw a shooting star fly straight down, seem to slam into something invisible and wriggle off to one side before winking out. Never saw that before or since. I think it must have hit a heavier layer of atmosphere.
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        • Posted by scojohnson 6 years, 2 months ago
          Thermal layers will do that given the speed.. And the optical illusions created from the boiling water vapor, super-heating the air, plasma from re-entry heat, etc. We always had a similar phenomenon at a desert Air Force Base where I was assignment in the 90s, C5s on approach were quite difficult to judge for distance from the base, some atmospheric effects from the heat in the summer would lens the image at the angle looking off the active runway, the jet could be 10 miles out (a C5 is still quite visible at 10 miles), and it would almost seem to shrink as it approached, then grow larger, with 5 miles being the same in appearance as a half mile for example.
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    • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 6 years, 2 months ago
      I don't know a lot about the atmospherics of a meteor fall, but most of what we see tend to be grains of sand and maybe pebbles, like pea gravel. Anything the size of a human fist would be relatively big coming down all the way. And yes, they do come in at about 10,000 MPH. In fact, it is sort of a rule in physics that stuff comes down as fast as it went up and escape from the Earth is 25,000 mph with 18,000 mph being orbital velocity. So, yeah, they travel super fast.
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    • Posted by scojohnson 6 years, 2 months ago
      Reminds me of something at Travis AFB around 1995 or so. I was on the flightline on grave shift and a flash went over us from horizon to horizon, straight over the base. The weird part was time, it seemed like everyone out there that night seemed to lose about 20 minutes, as if staring at it seeming like a second or 2, but 20 minutes had passed. A few minutes later, the Air Wing "pre-emptively" announced on all radio bands that what we saw was a missile test from Vandenberg AFB, which is in Southern California and we were between SF and Sacramento... I immediately wondered "we test missiles over the central valley, Stockton, and San Francisco at night?". Everyone working that night had the same suspicion of being fed a line of BS.

      We also had specific C5s modified (hollowed out) for space cargo, and one aircrew certified and cleared for deliveries from Area 51. I tried to pry something out of a friend of mine that had been there on missions several times, and the only thing he would say was that all the security was completely justified.

      The flight path of whatever it was looked much more like crossing from Nevada to the Pacific.
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      • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 2 months ago
        All kinds of conspiracy theories have spun up from someone saying something like "security was completely justified."
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        • Posted by scojohnson 6 years, 2 months ago
          Well, figure the F117 was "really" built from about 1971-1984 or so (HaveBlue), and the B2 had been flying missions long before it was ever rolled out to the public in 1988...

          Even the F35 and F22 were in "development" for 15 years - which includes prototypes, limited deployment, testing, QA, revisions, etc.. If we were going to start on a new project in 2001, versus what that would look like in 2017, we are basically comparing a Motorola StarTalk flip phone to an iPhone X. Hey - I think Blackberry is bringing back the flip phone in an Android smart-phone wrapping - looking forward to that.

          While it's expensive to be really the only world's superpower, I think the cost in life and as a percentage of the economy is pretty small compared to what we endured during World War 2. We don't have the stomach for that anymore - the media flips out over a couple of soldiers dying, or maybe 5,000 during the entire war on terrorism, versus 25,000+ dying in a single battle in World War 2, or 150,000 in the Civil War. We have gotten very good at using advanced technologies for lethality and preservation of American military lives. In order to preserve that advantage though, our adversaries can have no idea of what we are working on next, to put it mildly.

          The conspiracy wing nuts demand release or transparency - but they are also sci-fi geeks for the most part and want to have something cool to look at and talk about. But we don't develop this to oppress people, it's to ensure the American armed forces continue to reign enormously supreme. Not doing so has a high cost to human life. I don't think the conspiracy types consider or understand that, or don't care.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 6 years, 2 months ago
    I own three different kinds of meteorites. It is interesting to consider and having evidence of that the chemicals of life can be found everywhere is also compelling. But before I spent much more money on a complete collection of every known kind of rock from space, a light went on in my head and I realized that I was standing on a rock in space...

    Same will the solar eclipse... Yeah, I went out and viewed it through filters... but you know, we don't all run outside and stare at the sun every time there is no eclipse...

    I have two telescopes. I like going out to look at the stars. I just try to keep some perspective... So, +1 for the news. (I also get the Sky and Tel emails.)
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    • Posted by $ nickursis 6 years, 2 months ago
      I thought the first comment on the bottom was cute: Guy said "How come if it is bad to have your hands touch the surface, is this "professional" meteor hunter holding it up with his bare hands?" Gotcha.....
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    • Posted by $ nickursis 6 years, 2 months ago
      I also have a 6 inch Meade telescope, but I have come to the conclusion that I need binocular views to avoid a really bad view in either eye. I have a pair of 90mm Barska binocs that have done well for casual sky watching...
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 6 years, 2 months ago
        How do you steady them? I agree that binoculars are better. I also believe that telescopes should have fine tuning like microscopes do, but they don't. (Some do, I know. Most do not.). Binoculars do have fine tuning. But without some kind of mount, with binocs, every heartbeat makes the stars dance. I have a three small pairs. My best is a 12x42 Bushnell. So, I admire your 90 mm with its wide field of view.
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        • Posted by $ nickursis 6 years, 2 months ago
          They were actually very inexpensive, looking back at my mail I bought them in 2006 or 5, and they seem to be 10x60. Still they do a great job of rendering planets, galaxies and such and I can actually see them using both eyes. I use a Barska tripod, which I also use for my Nikon D3400 (did eclipse with it), and it can be placed on some stools to get high enough I can stand there and just move it with the handle by tightening up the grip to where it just moves. Its not the best, but works. Barska has a adapter that fits the tripod, so I just mount it up and then I can switch to camera.
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