4 ms·
Ask HN: Which re-entry/de-orbit was this?
Hi HN!
With the CZ5N re-entry happening I figured you could point me in the right direction to solve this mystery:
On the evening of july 14, around 20:15 UTC we saw something pass over our heads fairly slowly (apparently stationary), leaving a greenish, sparkly line over the course of several minutes. It also left a long trail that apparently was still illuminated by the sun, originating at an azimuth of ~210° (SSW).
Our observation position was ~48.08° N, 11.28° E (southern Germany, near Munich).
About 20 minutes later I tried digging into it a little on James Darpinian's See A Satellite Tonight and found a rocket/booster stage that could have had a matching trajectory (CZ-4B R/B).
I'd love to dig deeper into this, so:
1. Are there any websites where I can revisit that time/location? I'm aware of TLEs but would appreciate a "time-travel" view for the location in question
2. The CZ-4B R/B still seems to be „around“. Is it likely that we saw re-entry of only smaller parts of it that were just low enough to "hit" a substantial amount of atmosphere?
3. Are there other explanations for a slow-moving object leaving a trail creating greenish, sparkly lines?
4. What additional information would be needed to figure out what happened?
Any help is much appreciated!
- MilnerRoute 4y agoFive days earlier a 10-foot piece of space debris crashed in Australia - the largest one since SkyLab. https://www.newsweek.com/huge-piece-space-rocket-falls-sky-lands-sheep-farm-1729111 https://www.newsweek.com/huge-piece-space-rocket-falls-sky-l... It's probably unrelated -- but there's the possibility that an even larger object had split into two chunks, with one hitting Australia and the other taking an additional five days before its orbit decayed.
- throwaheyy 4y agoOf course no response from the faceless corporation dumping lethal space junk on people’s properties.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoProbably because it's not yet known which entity is responsible despite what has been posted on social media.
- Fatnino 4y agoIt looks A LOT like a piece of spacex dragon capsule's jetisoned trunk that was intended to fall into the sea between Australia and New Zealand. This debris was found just a short way earlier on its trajectory so seems clear to me that spacex was aiming for a controlled reentry and it went in just a little bit early. This likely due to fluctuations in the upper atmosphere but spacex should have left larger margins for error.
- londons_explore 4y agoThis sort of thing tends to be resolved privately with the landowners involved rather than publicly.
- politelemon 4y agoI would also suggest posting to Reddit's https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/ where these types of questions aren't uncommon.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 8bitsrule 4y agoCZ-5B re-entered over the Indian Ocean about 8 hours ago (10:45am MDT). [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-booster-rocket-debris-could-hit-earth-saturday/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-booster-rocket-debris-c...]
- Fatnino 4y agoTure, but only tangentially related to OP's post.