Comments on: Ionospheric luminescence

Ionospheric luminescence

brownpau — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 12:04:58 -0800

Ionospheric luminescence. Tonight. US East-coast skywatchers, look out for high, glowing clouds tonight between 9:30pm and 5:30am, as NASA fires rockets carrying combustible chemicals into the sky to study our planet's ionosphere. (Thank you, Spaceweather.) This reminds me, just a bit, of Projects Argus and Starfish.

By: brownpau

brownpau — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 12:16:41 -0800

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility has a Realplayer webcast page here which gives us a launch window between 9:30pm and 2:24am. Those of you with further interest in the above-linked high-altitude nuclear tests can check out the OSTI's historical films database, and this nuclear test image gallery, which includes a couple of Project Starfish jpegs: (1, 2). More old links dredged up from here, here, and here.

By: TedW

TedW — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 12:31:10 -0800

I am afraid I won't be able to see them from GA, but I may look up anyway. I remember a long ago series of similar tests involving glowing clouds of "fuel" of some sort released into the upper atmosphere. We looked at them in Maryland in the late 1960's, but I can't find any info about them and was too young at the time to remember a lot of details.

By: alumshubby

alumshubby — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 13:14:55 -0800

The 'burb I'm in is so darn light-polluted, I don't know if I could even tell the ionospheric luminescence from the generalized backscatter off of all those strip-mall and fast-food-chain lights.

By: danOstuporStar

danOstuporStar — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 13:36:53 -0800

this kinda "heads up" is why i love metafilter. Thank you, brownpau.

By: y2karl

y2karl — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 13:54:31 -0800

I saw one of these or something similar once when walking home from the store. It was like a giant emerald donut. It flashed, opened and faded in seconds--and this was under streetlights. I thought I'd finally seen a UFO. I called the UFO hotline the next day and they gave me the skinny: a missile launched form under a B-52's wing. Anybody here seen a UFO? Any Close Encounters or Implants in this crowd?

By: alumshubby

alumshubby — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 14:08:29 -0800

Yeah, give us the story...what's up with those anal probes, anyway? Proctologists from beyond the stars?

By: y2karl

y2karl — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 14:18:58 -0800

Whoo--there's a goldmine for them here

By: eatitlive

eatitlive — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 20:47:04 -0800

FYI, the launch was scrubbed Monday, 11:30, " because of a lack of science activity." They'll try again tomorrow, presuming they can scrounge up some more scientists.

By: emyd

emyd — Wed, 25 Jun 2003 13:39:35 -0800

They're trying it again tonight, hopefully starting at 9:30.

By: Songdog

Songdog — Thu, 26 Jun 2003 05:35:14 -0800

Scrubbed thrice. They'll try again tonight (Thursday, June 26) after 9:30 [US] eastern time.