Daytime Fireball spotted over Manitoba

UPDATE – 14 Jul 2014: We have received enough reports to tell that the fireball was well north of Winnipeg – the final burnout/explosion likely occurred near the Poplar River area of the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg. Any surviving fragments of the meteor would have continued north or northeast of this location. Given the difficulty of finding anything in this terrain, we are no longer planning a search and recovery effort.

UPDATE – 10 Jul 2014: We’ve received more than a dozen reports from around southern Manitoba of this rare daytime fireball. Most observers saw it due north, heading almost straight down. This means it was likely quite far north and heading even farther north, although without more observations the details are still hard to pin down. We’re now interested in hearing from anyone who spotted this thing from north of Gimli or anywhere in Westman, or from spots along Lake Winnipeg and into the north. Email skyinfo@manitobamsueum.ca with your report as outlined below.

Original post – 9 Jul 2014: Details are still coming in, but we have multiple reports of an extremely rare daytime fireball seen in central Manitoba about 11 am Central Time today (Wednesday, 9 July 2014). We are actively seeking reports from people who saw this event, and once we get enough data we will organize a search for pieces.

If you witnessed this object, please email a report to skyinfo@manitobamuseum.ca and include the following information:

• Your location (as precise as possible; using GPS or a map)
• The direction you were looking at the time of the sighting (north, south, etc)
• The motion of the object ( left-to-right or right-to-left)
• The path of the object (“straight down and angled slightly to the right”, “45 degree angle to horizon”, etc),
• A description of the sighting, including smoke trails, colour, sounds, explosions
• Name and telephone number so we can contact you

You should also report your sighting to the American Meteor Society at http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/fireball/report-a-fireball and the International meteor Organization at http://www.imo.net.fireball/report

It is suspected that the parent object was a small asteroid or comet which burned up in the earth’s atmosphere, high enough to do no damage but low enough the pieces may have survived the fall to earth. Any such pieces are not dangerous, will not start fires or scorch the earth, and will not have bubbles or crystals in them.

Further details will be released as they become available.

UPDATE – 21 May 2014: Sky and Telescope magazine has an article on the event on their website. LINK

UPDATE 2 – 21 May 2014: Even if it’s cloudy, you can listen in on the meteors via radio! (Thanks to Don Trueman for the LINK)

UPDATE 3 – 22 May 2014: Spaceweather.com also has a great article about the shower, and also the possibility of observing meteor impacts on the Moon through a telescope!

On the early morning of Saturday, May 24, we may see a brand-new meteor shower. A comet called P/209 LINEAR orbits the sun in a path that leaves a trail of dust and debris in the Earth’s orbit. When the earth moves through that trail of dust, the dust will slam into the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up in a flash of light called a meteor. This happens all the time, but this weekend the Earth will go through a big “dust bunny” in space, and so we could see many more meteors than usual. The forecast for this new shower is very uncertain, but it is possible that there will be dozens or even hundreds of meteors per hour visible from a dark site.

First, a warning: THIS MAY NOT HAPPEN! It is impossible to predict the movement of every piece of dust in the solar system. However, the current science suggests that the streams of dust from this comet will pass very close to earth. If we go right through the middle of this interplanetary dust bunny, we could get an amazing meteor storm. If we just skim the edge, we could get a bump in activity but nothing special. And of course, we could miss it entirely. So, if you do decide to go out and watch for this, understand that you’re taking a chance. Don’t blame me for the lost sleep!

If you decide to try your luck, you should head to a dark location, as far from city light as is practical,  on Friday evening. The peak of the shower is forecast for 2 a.m. Winnipeg time, but we really don’t know whether it will start early or not. Bring a reclining lawn chair, a blanket, and whatever other creature comforts you will need – astronomy is not an aerobic activity, and you will get cold quickly in the night air. You do NOT need a telescope, since the meteors will be visible to the unaided eye. Besides, you don’t know exactly where each meteor will appear, and so you want as wide a field of view as you can get – your eyes are already perfect meteor observing gear. Set up facing away from the closest glow of lights near you, and just lean back and look up. The meteors should appear to be coming roughly from the north, in the region below the North Star and to the right of the Big Dipper, but they will arc all around the sky.

If you do observe, a simple count of meteors can help scientists understand this meteor shower and its parent comet better. Just record the time you start watching and the time you stop, and the number of meteors seen. Don’t pool your counts with other observers – each person should record their own count. Reports can be sent to the International Meteor Organization, who are collecting worldwide data on this new meteor shower.

If you have a digital camera, you can try taking pictures of the meteors as well. You’ll need to set your camera on “Manual” and adjust the exposure time to as long as you can – usually 15 or 30 seconds (consult your camera’s manual for details on how to do this). Ideally, you would put your camera on a tripod, but I’ve also just placed it on the grass facing upwards (be careful not to scratch the screen!). Make sure you turn the flash off, since it won’t help the picture and will spoil your night vision. Press the button, and wait. You will take a lot of pictures without meteors in them, but eventually there will be a meteor visible while your camera is exposing. It’s that simple!

We’d love to hear your reports and see your pictures here – email them to me at skyinfo@manitobamuseum.ca or post them on our Facebook page!

Tonight, most of North America will be treated to an uncommon and beautiful celestial event. The Full Moon will rise tonight at sunset, with the bright planet Mars nearby. As they rise, you’ll be able to notice that the Moon is actually moving relative to more distant Mars – the Moon is orbiting the Earth,  from right to left from our point of view. You can see this motion as soon as the moon rises tonight, but that’s not the rare or beautiful part. The real treat is reserved for those who can stay up past midnight – those night owls will see a total lunar eclipse, the first visible from North America since 2011.

(In this article, all times given are Central Daylight Time (CDT), the current clock time for Manitoba.)

Starting about 12:20 a.m. CDT early on the morning of Tuesday, April 15th, the left edge of the moon will start to look a little… shady. Over the next hour or so, the moon will darken noticeably, beginning with the left edge and spreading across the face of the moon. This is the effect of the moon passing through the outer edge of Earth’s shadow, called the penumbra. The penumbra isn’t very dark, so it doesn’t block out all of the moon’s light, but it does dim it considerably.

Then, about 12:58 a.m. CDT, you’ll start to see a much darker and more defined notch taken out of the moon’s left edge. This notch will also spread from left to right, covering the moon’s surface in an arc of darkness. The moon is now passing through the darker central part of the Earth’s shadow, called the umbra. This shadow will slowly creep across the moon’s face for the next hour or so, dimming the moon’s brightness considerably. You’ll be able to see more stars in the sky as the light from the moon dims, especially if you are also away from local light pollution like city streetlights.

At 2:07 a.m. Central Daylight Time, the moon will be completely immersed in the darkest part of the earth’s shadow. Up until now, the bright parts of the moon have washed out any faint details, but now the earth’s shadow shows us its true colours. The only light that is reaching the moon during the total phase of the eclipse has a very special character. It is the light from all of the sunrises and sunsets all around the world at that time. A lunar eclipse is sometimes called a “blood moon” because the moon turns a deep red colour. (Actually, the colour can vary a lot – depending on the clouds, smog, and pollution in the atmosphere, the eclipsed moon can range from deep red to orange to copper, with brighter or darker patches.)

Mid-eclipse occurs at 2:46 a.m. CDT – that’s when the moon should be at its darkest and most colourful. From that point on, the event unwinds itself, with the moon brightening first on the left edge, leaving the Earth’s shadow behind. The total eclipse ends at 3:25 a.m. CDT, and by 5 a.m. the whole thing is mostly over. (See the chart below for times across North America.)

Because of the early-morning timing, no public events are planned, but you can view this eclipse with your unaided eyes. A pair of ordinary binoculars can provide a close-up view. Make sure you look for the red planet Mars, shining just above the moon at its brightest and closest to our planet for this year!

The weather forecast for southern Manitoba is clear and cold, so if you do head out to view the eclipse, make sure you have a way to stay warm! If you opt for an inside view, both NASA and the SLOOH telescope will be live-streaming views of the eclipse. Everyone sees the eclipse at the same physical time no matter where they are, but because of time zones, the clock time it occurs depends on where you live. Whether you’re watching live or online, the ties given above are the milestones to look for.

This eclipse is also a bit unusual because it is the first of a series of four consecutive lunar eclipses. Often, things don’t’ line up exactly, and the moon only skims the edge of the earth’s shadow, providing a partial eclipse – you miss out on the red colour and just see the dark “notch” effect. However, we can see another total lunar eclipse this coming October, and two more next year as well.

For more details on how and why eclipses occur, check out this great article at Sky and Telescope  magazine. Good luck and clear skies!

The phone woke me up early on a Sunday. My sister calling. She’s not an early riser; something must be wrong.

“I was listening to the news – the space shuttle was supposed to land, but didn’t.” Silence, as I try to process the information.

What?

In 30 seconds I am in the living room, putting on my glasses with one hand and fumbling with the TV remote in the other. I don’t have to switch to NASA-TV. The story is everywhere. The Space Shuttle Columbia, with its crew of seven astronauts, is missing.

Two minutes later, I’m in the car, heading to the Planetarium. We have better resources there, NASA TV direct from satellite and several computers for streaming and searching. I don’t know why I’m going; it’s not like NASA needs me, but I just have to go, to know, to do SOMETHING. I arrive, breathless, to find other co-workers streaming in. Some have tears in their eyes. The reports come slowly: all contact lost during re-entry; no landing; some kind of warning indicators in the left wing; and then the first video of a fireball breaking up in the sky over Texas.

My recollections of the rest of the day are a blur. For the first few minutes, I had held out hope that the crew might have escaped, but that hope quickly dwindles. Columbia is gone.

They were only sixteen minutes from home.

The phones start to ring. Local media, other staff, the public. We watch the news, check forums, watch and re-watch the footage of the launch that we had taped nearly two weeks before. Anderson Cooper, one of CNN’s “new guys” at the time, is at the desk when it happens, and he becomes the face of the tragedy until veteran space reporter Miles O’Brien gets there. All of the talking heads on every network are asking the same question: What had happened?

In the aftermath, it turned out that Columbia was doomed from the time it launched. A piece of insulating foam broke free of the shuttle’s big orange external tank during the launch, damaging the heat shield on the front of the left wing. When the shuttle re-entered the atmosphere, the frictional heating burned through the heat shield, tearing off the wing and causing the shuttle to break apart at 400,000 km/h. NASA had screwed up, and people had died.

Historically, the end of January has been a bad time for space exploration. On January 27, 1967, the first Apollo moon rocket caught fire during routine testing on the launch pad, and three astronauts perished. On January  28, 1986 the shuttle Challenger exploded during launch, killing all seven astronauts aboard. And now a second shuttle and its crew of seven was gone.

In every case, NASA rallied, found, faced and fixed the problems, and moved on. There were words about the cost of exploration, the necessity of risk-taking, the benefits of curiosity and passion. Today, more than a decade after the loss of Columbia, there are people living full-time in space. The International Space Station and the Chinese Tiangong 1 space station orbit overhead, the frontier outposts of our exploration into the universe. But is it worth it? Is it worth seeing crying families every decade or so, immersed in a disaster that grips the world?

There is no right answer, but I can tell you what every member of the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia would tell you: it is not only worth the cost, it is essential. Humanity must explore. The practical reasons are obvious: growing population and dwindling resources on our home planet; knowledge and technology to be gained; searching for other habitable worlds to colonize and explore; the possibility of life elsewhere. But the main reason humanity must explore is this: exploration is one of the defining characteristics of the human species. We have always looked at the horizon and wondered what is out there. It has defined our modern world, and driven the development of technologies that today are essential to our civilization. Exploration built the world we live in, and without it, humanity is doomed to a slow, stagnant decay into extinction.

Today I remember those who have given their lives while exploring space. Thank you for reaching for the stars.

Over the past week we have had dozens of reports of green fireballs over Manitoba. Here’s the typical description: A flaming object, greenish in colour, flashing into existence and flying in a straight line towards the horizon. Perhaps it explodes; perhaps it heads behind some trees or buildings and disappears. It’s usually visible for only a few seconds, leaving many viewers wondering if they even saw it or imagined it. It usually looks like it is very close overhead, or came to earth just behind the trees nearby.

These are well-known objects, although we seem to be getting a lot of them lately. Called bolides, they are basically large versions of meteors (which are commonly called “shooting stars” or “falling stars”). They are dying gasp of a small piece of rock that has been in space since before the Earth itself was formed.

Back in the day, about 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system itself was just forming from a slowly-spinning disk of gas and dust. Most of the materials went to form the Sun; most of the rest formed the planets. All that was left were tiny pieces of dust and rock, scattered throughout the solar system, orbiting the sun in oval-shaped orbits that carried them across the solar system. Eventually, they crash into a planet, like the Earth as an example.

When a piece of this cosmic dust crashes into earth, there is no danger to us – Earth is significantly larger than a piece of dust, and so we win this particular collision. The dust hits our atmosphere at orbital speeds, without the benefit of the heat shields we put on our returning spacecraft. The friction with the air heats the dust and surrounding air so quickly that the air itself glows in a long trail which marks the dust’s demise. Many kilometers below, we can see the streak of light as a meteor. This happens all the time – if you go outside on a dark, moonless night away from city lights, on average you will see a half-dozen meteors per hour. If the piece of material is bigger – say the size of a grapefruit – it makes a much bigger flash. It may survive long enough to get to the deeper layers of our atmosphere, where it explodes in a bright flash. These are much rarer – you are lucky to see one or two of these in your lifetime, since larger pieces of rock in space are (thankfully) much rarer than dust-sized specks.

Every so often, a comet can go by and leave a big trail of dust in the Earth’s path – a cosmic dustbunny in space. When the Earth goes through this cloud of cometary dust, we can get a lot of meteors in a short period of time – a meteor shower. Meteor showers usually produce a few meteors per hour, with the more active ones producing a few dozen per hour – much more than the average, but still the sort of thing you have to be looking for to see.

It so happens that right now, we are just coming off of the annual Leonid meteor shower – a relatively weak shower that can produce a dozen or so meteors an hour in most years. This is the source of many of the meteors seen over the last week – the bright green fireballs are larger pieces of the cometary dust that Earth encounters at this time of year.

Alas, none of these fireballs are likely to survive all the way down to the ground to become meteorites – cometary materials are made mostly of ice, and so the heat of their passage through the atmosphere completely vaporizes them.

Beginning March 7, Comet PANSTARRS will become visible in the evening sky for observers in Manitoba. This is a cool chance to see a comet, those mysterious visitors from the ragged edge of the solar system that occasionally grace our skies. But, you’ll need a pair of binoculars (and clear skies) for the best view.

What is Comet PANSTARRS?

It’s a small chunk of ice only a few kilometers in diameter that is in a long, oval-shaped orbit around the sun. Most of the time it is totally invisible, but right now it is swinging close past the sun. The sun’s heat vaporizes some of the ice, and the solar wind blows the dust and gas back into a tail which can stretch for a million kilometers or more.  There are millions of comets out there, but usually they are too far from both the Sun and the Earth to be visible except in large telescopes.

What’s with the name?

PANSTARRS is the name of the program that discovered it – the PANnoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System. Comets are named after their discovers, which in the past meant the person who first saw it. Nowadays, in the realm of automated telescopes making discoveries without human intervention, it often means an acronym instead of a name. You can learn more about the PAN-STARRS system here.

How do I see it?

There is a finder chart from Sky and Telescope magazine here. While the comet is bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye, it is also in very bright twilight skies right after sunset. Most observers will probably need binoculars to see it, and a clear western horizon with no buildings, trees or streetlights to distract. The comet is about second magnitude, which is about as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper, so it should be visible if the sky is clear and haze-free. It will likely look like a faint fuzzy blob, and the tail may or may not be visible. Comets are notoriously unpredictable, and can change their appearance in a matter of hours, especially if they’re as close to the Sun as this one is, so keep checking back for updates.

Can I take a picture of it?

You can try! If you have a digital camera, put it on a tripod or fencepost or something sturdy and point it towards the comet. Set the camera for Manual exposure, and select an exposure time of between 2 and 10 seconds. (Check your camera’s manual for how to do this.) Take a picture and see what it looks like, then take another one with a longer exposure time and see what it looks like. Trial and error will give you a decent chance of recording this celestial interloper. Try zooming in (which usually requires a longer exposure time) and even holding the camera up to your binocular or telescope eyepiece if you have one. Today’s cameras can do some amazing things, so try yours and see what happens.

So what?

Bright comets are beautiful and rare sights. Scientifically they offer a glimpse into the early days of our solar system. They’re basically left-over chunks of material that didn’t get swept up into one of the planets of our solar system, kept in a deep freeze for the last few billion years or so. Comets are responsible for most of the water on our planet, by impacting the Earth during the early days of its formation. And, they’re just cool!

Finally, another comet, Comet ISON, will appear in the sky later this year, and could be even bigger and brighter, so this is a good warm-up for observers.

We’d love to see your pictures of this comet. Send them to SkyInfo@ManitobaMuseum.ca and we’ll post the best ones on our website.

Jupiter and Venus have been engaged in a beautiful dance in the western sky after sunset. With the warm weather, I’ve been running outside in shirtsleeves every few minutes, waiting for the light levels to be at their best for viewing. A little point-and-shoot camera on a tripod is all you need to capture this dramatic dance of the planets.

If you aren’t happy with the picture your semi-intelligent camera computer comes up with, you can fall back on an old technique from the film days: bracketing. Set the camera for “manual” mode, and start with a 1 second exposure time. Then takes several shots with exposure times on either side of that, both higher and lower. Basically, shoot one image at each setting on the dial or each click of the button. You’ll get a whole range of pictures with different colour, depths, contrast, and definition. In the days of film, this was essential since you couldn’t see your results until after you had developed the film… sometimes a whole night’s work would come back out of focus or underexposed due to an error that went uncorrected under the sky. Nowadays, bracketing is just a way to explore the full depth of the scene before you, and reveal views very different from what your eyes see. Your images won’t replace the view of seeing it live, but they will remind you of your observation, and give you another perspective from which to contemplate the dance of the solar system.

On August 23 at about 9:35 pm, a bright fireball was seen across southern Manitoba and several U.S. States. We are collecting reports of the object to determine where it came from and also where any pieces might have landed. If you say this object, please email us at skyinfo@manitobamuseum.ca with the details.

Please include the following information:

• Where you were when you saw it;
• The direction you were facing when you first saw it;
• Whether the object was moving left-to-right, right-to-left, or up-and-down, and at what angle
• How high above the horizon it was – use the degree scale, where 0 is the horizon, 90 is straight overhead. So, halfway up the sky is 45 degrees, a third of the way up from the horizon is 30 degrees, etc.
• Any other details – colour, sound, how long you saw it for, etc.

Your reports can help us track down this object, which was probably a small asteroid burning up in the atmosphere.

April 12, 1961 – a date that will forever be a part of human history. The date that humanity became a spacefaring species. This achievement ranks amongst the greatest of human accomplishments – fire, the wheel, agriculture, the electric guitar – and its long-reaching effects are still rippling through our future.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin boarded the Vostok spacecraft and flew once around the Earth. HIs 108-minute flight was significant only for its newness; the flight would be easily surpassed by both the Soviets and the Americans within a year, Gagarin became a world hero, not just for the Soviet Union but for all of us – he had gone where no one had gone before, and returned safely, blazing a trail that many of us still yearn to follow.

If you want to see what Yuri’s flight was like, watch the film First Orbit – a beautiful real-time recreation of the flight, using out-the-window imagery shot from the International Space Station, which closely mimics the Vostok’s flight path. Premiered on 12 April 2011, the film celebrates the 50 years that we have been leaving Earth for the vacuum of space. I can’t help but wonder what the next 50 years bring, both in spaceflight and in other events. Will we build on Yuri’s flight and push our frontiers ever farther, or remained mired in short-sighted and short-term plans to stay the course in space? We’ll see.

For myself, I echo Yuri’s first words after the Vostok’s carrier rocket lifted off the pad: “Poyekhali!” Translation: “Let’s go!”

50 years ago today, Soviet air force pilot Lt. Yuri A. Gagarin didn’t know he would become be the first human into space in just a week’s time. Gagarin and his colleagues, Gherman Titov and Grigori Nelyubov, were all in training for the first flights of the Vostok spacecraft, but the Soviet leadership had not yet formally authorized the flight nor assigned a cosmonaut. What’s more, the United States was racing to put a man in space as well, and although they lagged behind the Soviet Union, a surprise was still possible. Each man trained for the upcoming flight, now only a week away,  as if he would be the pilot.

On April 5, 1961, the cosmonauts flew to the launch centre with their medical team and a film crew. They are greeted by Sergei Korolev, the mastermind behind the Soviet space program. Korolev pushes for a decision on who will fly first, to no avail. General Kaminin, the man in charge of cosmonaut selection and training, will not make a final decision yet. That night, three young cosmonauts go to sleep, not knowing which of them will soon become the most famous person in the world.