A curious thing happened in the European's sky Options

[Ant103]

Good evening.

During the night from the 25 to the 26th of December (this month), some observers have seen a "triangle" in the sky.
Link to the topic on the most famous astronomy forum of the France : http://www.astrosurf.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001888.html

And a quick traduction of the first post :

[in the south of France]The night yesterday, 25th december 2006, at the middle of the night, I observed a strange thing...
I began to take my first photography on M81 galaxy when I've remarked a non-observed phenomena before this.
At the left of Orion, at the top of Pi Orionis in the Orion shield, stands a perfect isocel triangle with hard edges (vapor consistence...). It luminosity was equivalent to a persitent track made by a big meteor.
This form, around 4° sized, stayed 2 or 3 minutes with the same brightness and the "triangle" began to dilated himself from East to West but not from North to South. During its enlargment, its brightness began to fall and this form slowly disapear and wasn't visible one quarter of hour later.
I hope that other guys have seen this thing too...

If anybody have an hypothesis?

A drawing of the scene :


This phenomena was seen from the Alpes Bavaroises and the Forêt-Noire by other observers.

Hypothesis formulated :
- a meteor rest but the altitude of this may have to be produce at very high altitude to be see from very different point in the same area of the sky (near Orion).
- a satellite ergols explusion?
- a rocket?

That's why I post this in this section because it can concern a engine around the earth.

All information are welcome .

[djellison]

You'll have to help me with the French.

Did this appear for one night, or multiple nights? How long did it last - how bright was it and a lot of the links on that link you give seem dead.

If I had to guess - I'd go for venting from a discarded upper stage.

[Ant103]

One night, during 15 minutes. I have no information about the brightness but the drawing show how it was (but you say that the links I give are dead. From my "side" the run correctly).

[djellison]

15 mins - I'd say it's almost certainly a 'dump' of some sort - was the 'source' moving across the sky - if so, how quickly?

Doug

[Ant103]

The source has a form of a triangle. It didn't move but the size of the object go to be bigger and bigger in the East-West direction, and its brightness lower in the same time. The speed was very low by follow the observations...

[djellison]

Very slow speed would suggest a very high altitude orbit - and actually - that position is not too far from equatorial, thus perhaps it was a burn or the expiring of a spacecraft in geostationary orbit.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Astrotreff, a German website also spoke about it and observers were convinced it was either gas dumped by a satellite or a triangular view of a meteor shower...

[Bob Shaw]

Very slow speed would suggest a very high altitude orbit - and actually - that position is not too far from equatorial, thus perhaps it was a burn or the expiring of a spacecraft in geostationary orbit.

Doug:

Slow speed = High altitude - or the object's track was along the observer's line of sight.

o It could be a controlled dump of fuel etc
o It could be an engine burn
o It could be an explosive rupture of a spent stage

Bob Shaw

[Ant103]

The problem is that the observers were separated about 600 km and the object was observed in the same portion of the sky. It's as if there no paralax effect...

[djellison]

600km compared to 35,7890 km is little to no parallax anyway. Compared to Geostationary, given the Lat., 600km is probably more like 300 km in the N/S direction from the perspective of a geostationary satellite - the sort of parallax that a human eye would see at 10 metres or so.

Doug

[Guest_John Flushing_*]

I visited www.freetranslation.com. (Computer translation so you know it's bad). Instead of posting the entire thread directly to this forum, I created a page on my personal website for those who wish to view the translation.

http://www.freewebs.com/the-raccoon-in-the...ionofthread.htm

[Bob Shaw]

John:

The translations are quite charming - a broken URL doesn't walk, it appears ('il ne marche pas' in the origional, I assume) - and UMSF is 'Unmanned Spaceflight, a famous forum of fascinated spatial conquète...'

I detect a lack of Lipovitan-D in the posts, though...

Bob Shaw

[Pedro_Sondas]

Few hours before:

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0612/25glonass/

[Ant103]

Bob : what is "Lipovitan-D"?

Pedro : thanks

[Guest_Myran_*]

Ant103 wrote: Bob : what is "Lipovitan-D"?

I think its one counterpart to 'Red Bull' in Japan, the term became one in-joke here on this forum during the Hyabasa asteroid encounter.

But Im happy to see it turned out to be one rather easily indentification of a Glonass launch, instead of other kinds of triangular speculation that have gotten too much attention on the airwaves.
Perhaps those also were caused by launches elsewhere and the story grew by each retelling.

And yes, Happy New year all!