Mike's Astro Photos

Here is a pretty cool space video a friend sent me:

We Are All Connected – Watch more Funny Videos

Fake Meteor Crater In Latvia

A report about a 20 meter meteor crater and burning meteorite came out Sunday night. Minutes after the report surfaced meteorite experts called foul.

Today scientists have reported that the crater was man made and concluded this was not caused by a meteor and must be some sort of hoax.

Possible non meteor explanations include:

1) Publicity stunt to increase tourism perpetrated by Borat and the Latvian Government
2) Russian weapons test gone bad
3) Underground natural gas explosion
4) Latest experiment from balloon boy’s dad

At this point most news organizations outside are reporting this as a hoax. The people who created / reported the incident made a pretty cool video though.

In an effort refine or confirm the current meteor trajectory I have been doing a lot of work to improve the altitude and azimuth readings from the collected videos. A couple of meteor experts suggested taking calibrated stellar photos of the direct video sightings. A calibrated stellar photo is a picture or video that contains visible stars or celestial objects taken with the same camera in the same location. The frames from the meteor video can then be layered over the calibrated photo and precise azimuth and altitude readings can be determined. Using known reference points in the calibrated photo you can get reference points to the unknown object in the original photo.

I contacted the York Water Company and asked if we could shoot some video from the fish eye camera that recorded the meteor on July 6th. Based on the distortion and power of the camera I thought grabbing stars was going to be hard. A friend of mine was checking the star charts and let me know that the full moon would be rising in the east on October 4th and October 5th. York’s camera faces east and I agreed this would be our best chance for calibrating the photo. By recording the moon rising on two different nights we would be able to obtain dozens of reference points throughout the night. The videos turned out perfectly and I have been able to do exactly what I wanted.

There are a total of nine frames from the original meteor video. I was able to layer these frames over the moon pictures and in three cases I got perfect matches. The meteor is exactly in the same position as the moon at different points of time. The rest of the frames partially overlay or come very close to moon pictures. I have been able to get a much more precise reading of the altitude and azimuth from the York video using this new calibrated photo. When I trace the meteor path to the horizon in the star maps I come up with a 67 degree angle. If I draw a line NE at 67 degrees in Google Earth from the York Water pumping station it intersects with Rob Matson’s 0km impact point almost perfectly (Rob’s point is actually 67.5 degrees NE from York Water). It is my understanding Rob did not use the York Water video in his original 3D model projection because we could not get a precise enough ALT-AZ reading from the camera due to the distortion caused by the fisheye lens. I interpret the analysis from this calibrated video as a confirmation of what Rob has already predicted. I find it pretty amazing how close this new angle comes to Rob’s original projection considering Rob only used the Pittsburgh video and my astro photo as input for his calculations.

York Water Trajectory Map

We finished the construction on the observatory about 6 weeks ago. I have been waiting for the pier for the last month. I was late getting the pier order into pier tech, I did not realize the had to fabricate it / build to order. I got shipping confirmation on Monday so the pier should be here any day now. Once that is installed I’ll be at 100% and ready to start taking nice astro photos again. I haven’t been able to photograph without the pier as there is too much vibration with the tripod on the wooden floor. Almost there, I can’t wait!

Observatory

The Mars Rover has found another big meteorite on Mars. Interesting article with some great pictures:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0910/11meteorite/

I have to do a lot of shadow analysis with all of these new videos so I went googling and found this program written by someone at MIT.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/g8rghr/297509

It has been pretty useful conceputally interpreting the shadows. We will need percise measurements of the shadows in order to get anything tangible out of the shadow videos.

NASA is set to crash a rocket into the moon at 7:30 AM EST tomorrow morning.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/08/probe.moon.crash/index.html

hmm… this could be interesting.

here’s NASA’s official site for this event:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/index.html

This video shows a shadow that is cast from a flag pole caught in the light of the Mason Dixon Meteor on July 6th 2009. This is certainly the best shadow video we have acquired yet. The tall flag pole casts a long shadow and mutliple frames of movement were captured. If you would like to know more information about this video or watch the high res version please email me at mike.hankey [at] gmail.com.

My wife had her 40th birthday this weekend. We threw her a big party and then I took her to New York City for a few days to catch a show and look at some meteorites…

Meteor Impact Reveals Ice Under Surface of Mars

Ice On The Moon

I got this in an email from a random internet user named kirk2012. Kirk this is hilarious, thanks so much for taking the time to make this.

Andromeda Calling Comic (Click To Enlarge)

The new observatory is almost complete. I just got power working last night. I have the scope setup in there on the tripod as I haven’t gotten the pier yet. Its currently being fabricated and I should have it by the end of the month. Photography wise I’m limited to piggyback shots until I get the pier installed. I took this photo of Andromeda last night, I simply mounted my camera on top of my telescope, pointed to the Andromeda and snapped 5×2 minute exposures. I stacked 3 inside photoshop to create this image. There was the lowest default zoom on the camera, so the size of Andromeda is what it would be if you saw it with your naked eye (no magnification). Andromeda is the fuzzy ball in the center of the pic.

Andromeda Galaxy - September 19th, 2009

Meteorite Window Test

As I reported a few days ago a farmer in Lancaster contacted me about some strange rocks he found on his farm. I went out to see the rocks and they were definitely strange and a little meteoric. My initial thoughts were the rocks were probably some sort of slag, but it was not a type of slag I recognized. When I encounter suspicious rocks I photograph them and send the pictures out to people that are more knowledgeable about meteorites than I am.

The next day I sent the pics out to the meteorite list and within 10 minutes I got 20 emails back that in effect said… “that looks like a meteorite / that could be a meteorite.” The members gave me suggestions on a few tests I could run that would help confirm if it was in fact a meteorite. The tests included a bulk density test, a window test and a nickle test. Several members suggested to ‘cut that sucker open’.

On site I did the bulk density test and the window test. Three of the rocks passed the bulk density test so this was a very positive sign. For the window test, using an electric sander we shaved away part of the rocks exterior so we could look inside. The window revealed small metal flakes that looked like chrondules.  Unfortunately we also saw some vesicles (small holes/ air bubbles inside the stone.)At the time we did the tests it was dark and I thought the holes could have been caused by the sander.

Window test - showing vesicles (holes)

When I got the rock home I took some pictures of the window and emailed them out to some meteorite experts. They quickly responded and told me holes = slag… no meteorite.

This was kind of a bummer, but a great learning experience. I was able to learn and execute two new field tests that I can use to help identify meteorites. I was also very happy that the farmer found these rocks and called me about them. Gideon, I’m sorry it doesn’t look like these are meteorites, but they are defineately the best meteor-wrongs I’ve found so far in this adventure. Thank you very much for finding them and calling me about them.

Meteor Wrong Sliced

For learning purposes and to be extra sure I wanted to follow through with the two other tests. I ordered a nickle test online, but haven’t gotten it yet. I drove out to Haggerstown MD to Derik Bower’s house. Derik has a diamond bladed rock saw and offered to slice the rock for me. When I showed Derik the rock he laughed and said, “that really looks like a meteorite”. We cut up the rock and inside we could see air bubbles that essentially confirmed this is a meteor-wrong.  If it weren’t for the bubbles it looks a little like this black meteorite slice. This rock has a lot of meteoric attributes inside and out, but the one thing that categorically rules out meteorite is air bubbles inside the rock.

The new tests to identify a meteorite I learned from this rock are:

– bulk density test
– tile test (scrape the rock on the backside of a bathroom tile. A real meteorite should not leave a mark)
– window test (shave off a small piece of the exterior and look inside)
– slice test (use a rock saw to cut off a slice of the rock)
– nickle test (google nickle allergy test, buy one, follow instructions. All meteorites should test positive.)

Here’s what 2000 postcards look like. Makes you wonder, if spammers printed a postcard for each piece of spam they sent how much room that would take up.

Meteorite Postcards

The post cards hit the mail Thursday. We should hopefully start getting some new leads in soon.

I’ve gotten about six strange rock reports so far which is great! It shows the locals know meteorites could be on the ground and they are keeping an eye out for them. I have been able to identify most of the rocks I’ve seen so far, but this one in particular I’m not sure about. If anyone knows what this rock is please let me know.

Strange Rock

Strange Rock

Strange Rock

Strange Rock