2 November 2008

We just switched from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time. The Sun had been waking up about a minute earlier each day and going to bed about a minute earlier. Because of the time change the Sun will wake up almost an hour earlier today (0627 EST) than it did yesterday (0726 EDT). The Sun won't wake up as late as it did yesterday again until after we have returned to Daylight Saving Time again in April. On the days during the winter when the Sun wakes up the latest (30Dec08-9Jan09) it only wakes up at 0720.

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Observing Location	PSC
Observational Period	0945-1000 EDT
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Isolated Clouds Temperature 42° F Wind Calm Humidity Moderate Barometric Pressure 30.53" Hg Rising Feels Like Cool There are stripes of very thin cirrus clouds in various parts of the sky. The cloud cover is even more obvious in the filtered binocular. Transparency Good Seeing I
Instruments	Brunton 8x21 compact binocular w/Welco gold shade 14 welder's filter - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target Sunspots Constellation Lib Category Solar Time yyyymmdd.hhmm 20081102.0945 EDT Comments Distance Light Time 0.992 AU m 15s Angular Size 32' 17.7" Altitude 21.7° Heliographic Latitude (B0) 4.19° Heliographic Longitude (L0) 233.55° Parallactic Angle (P) 24.16° Carrington rotation number (CR) 2076 Nothing Seen There is a new bipolar, Cycle 24 group (1007) showing up in the upper right quadrant of the SOHO images.   Groups Spots R North 0 0 0 South 0 0 0 Total 0 0 0 R = (Groups * 10) + Spots)

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A piece of garbage thrown overboard from the ISS back in Jul07 is about to reenter earth's atmosphere. The Early Amonia Servicer is the size of a double-wide refrigerator and ways 1400 pounds.

detail from a NASA graphic

It is expected to be completely incinerated as it passes through Earth's atmosphere and pose no threat to earth. The trajectory places reentry in the "early hours" (0346 UTC) of 3Nov08, ±15 hours. Given the high degree of uncertainty about the time of reentry it is impossible to say where it will take place, on which orbit, or even if it will be during the "early hours" of the 3rd. But if it reenters at 0346 UTC the EAS Ground Tacks, at The Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies, shows that it will occur over the Pacific Ocean SW of Baja, Mexico, while on an ascending pass. That would place reentry at ~1946 PST tonight or about 30 minutes after the end of Astronomical Twilight.

Space Weather has a Satellite Tracker application, but it does not show any visible passes of the EAS over the Bronx.