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Russia's Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt, has been stranded in Earth orbit since a main engine failure in early November. The spacecraft is now sinking back into Earth's atmosphere, with re-entry expected in mid-January. "On New Year's Day, I traveled to the French Riviera (850km from home) to record Phobos-Grunt's last passage over France," says astrophotographer Thierry Legault. This is the picture he took through a 14-inch telescope.
"It appears that the satellite is moving backwards with its solar panels deployed but not receiving the sunlight," notes Legault. "This may explain why Phobos-Grunt had no energy to communicate with Earth." An 80-second video shows the probe soaring almost directly above Legault's observing site on the Plateau de Calern. "At the scale of the video the satellite would cross your screen in about 1/30s," he says.
While a telescope is required to see the outlines of the spacecraft, the human eye alone is sufficient to see Phobos-Grunt as a speck of light in the night sky. On high passes, it glows almost as brightly as a first magnitude star. another great shot of space . . .
Yesterday, Jan. 4th, Earth passed through a stream of debris from shattered comet 2003 EH1. The encounter produced a strong display of Quadrantid meteors over the Atlantic side of our planet, as many as 80 per hour according to the International Meteor Organization. Meteor rates peaked hours later and remained high hours longer than forecasters expected, which shows that we still have a lot to learn about the debris stream of 2003 EH1.
Zack Clothier of Thurman, New York, photographed this Quadrantid streaking over a lake in the Adirondacks.
"Temperatures were below zero here in the Adirondacks, but the sky put on such a show I stayed and watched it for four hours," says Clothier.
http://spaceweather.com/
"Temperatures were below zero here in the Adirondacks, but the sky put on such a show I stayed and watched it for four hours," says Clothier.
http://spaceweather.com/
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