Strange Object Above Alaska

[zorgon]

Strange Object Above Alaska

So happened to be pulling some files from ATS and saw the headline...

Lens Flare? I do not think so
Had to chech it out only to find two pages up people saying "yup its lens flare"

Well its a very interesting picture nonetheless



Now it seems that more than one person saw this and it was mentioned on Channel 2 Weather Team and on the Flicker website there is a second photo... and they mention a rocket launch...


By Brehl Garza Photography

NASA rocket? shooting star? what is it?

Lens flare or NASA rocket?
On Saturday, Feb. 18 at 8:41 p.m., scientists launched a NASA sounding rocket from Poker Flat Research Range into a brilliant aurora display. The rocket mission, designed to gather information on space weather conditions that affect satellite communications, was a success.

"It was a terrific aurora, the rocket worked great, the instruments worked great and the supporting radar (at Poker Flat) worked wonderfully," said Steve Powell of Cornell University, the principal investigator for the launch. "We achieved all of our objectives. We're ecstatic over the results and our graduate students can't wait to sink their teeth into the data."

After monitoring satellites earlier Saturday that showed an abundance of charged particles coming from the sun and streaming toward Earth's magnetic field, members of the rocket team, which included University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers and personnel from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, were prepared for a night of vigorous aurora. With clear skies at Poker Flat and also at the villages of Fort Yukon and Venetie, where they had narrow-field cameras aimed toward the sky, the scientists opened their launch window at 8 p.m. They watched the aurora dance directly overhead at Poker Flat, waited until the aurora was perfect over Fort Yukon and then launched the two-stage rocket.

In the 10 minutes, 25 seconds it took for the rocket to arc to a high point 200 miles above Venetie to the payload's landing in northern Alaska, a complicated array of antennas deployed, and the rocket both gathered and then transmitted an immense amount of information back to Poker Flat.

"We got a CD of data in our pockets the same night," Powell said. Graduate students at Cornell University, the University of New Hampshire, Dartmouth College and the University of Oslo will use the data as part of their doctoral studies. Their goal is to better model Earth's upper atmosphere and discover more about how space weather affects satellite communications we use every day.

The launch is the first and final one from Poker Flat Research Range this spring. Technicians from the range are today searching for the two rocket motors used to propel the mission. A few days after its launch, Powell was at Poker Flat marveling how the launch went.

"So many things have to come together to have a mission success, and we had them all Saturday night."

Poker Flat Research Range is the largest land-based sounding rocket range in the world and is located 30 miles north of Fairbanks on the Steese Highway. The UAF Geophysical Institute operates the range under contract to NASA. More than 300 major scientific sounding rockets have launched from the facility since it was founded in 1969.

NASA rocket? shooting star? what is it? - Flickr

Well it seems that POKER FLATS in ALASKA did indeed lauch a rocket that night during a spectacular Aurora....

Rocket Launches Into Dazzling Northern Lights Show
SPACE.com Staff
Date: 21 February 2012 Time: 06:00 AM ET


A two-stage Terrier-Black Brant rocket arced through aurora about 200 miles above Earth on the Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling in the Alfvén resonator (MICA) mission to study the physics of the northern lights. Stage one of the rocket has just separated and is seen falling back to Earth in this photo taken on Feb. 18, 2012.
CREDIT: Terry E. Zaperach, NASA

A team of scientists launched a small rocket into an eye-popping northern lights display Saturday (Feb. 18) in an attempt to discover what makes auroras tick.

The two-stage suborbital rocket blasted off from the Poker Flat Research Range just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, and reached a height of about 217 miles (349 kilometers) as part of a NASA-funded study into how the northern lights can affect signals from global positioning system (GPS) satellites and other spacecraft.

"We're investigating what's called space weather," said the study's lead investigator Steven Powell of Cornell University in a statement. "Space weather is caused by the charged particles that come from the sun and interact with the Earth's magnetic field. We don't directly feel those effects as humans, but our electronic systems do."

Photos of Saturday's launch show the rocket as a dazzling streak of light soaring into a bright curtain of green hues created by the northern lights.

SOURCE- Space.com


A fisheye photo taken by an automated camera near the entrance gate at the Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Ala., as a suborbital rocket launches into the northern lights on a science mission on Feb. 18, 2012.
CREDIT: Donald Hampton

[1Worldwatcher]

Excellent research as usual. I wish I could watch a rocket launch first hand. but this truly does point too the discoveries of such mission's too understand how,what and where we are attempting to go with research for this field.
I suppose if one had too truly ponder the initiatives of such research, it is ironic of the time they currently instituting these kinds of experiment's of the ever increasing changes of our Global magnetosphere and the current state of the 11 year solar maximum events.
And, if I remember correctly Zorgon, you had made many mention's too the anomalies of our planet's magnetosphere and the implications.
It was back on ATS when you had brought this too our attention.
Well, one thing is for sure "Something is always happening somewhere when it comes to the Hush-hush Panels..."
Thanks for sharing those very impressive articles and photo's!!

1Worldwatcher

[The GUT]

Lens flare? I'm with you, Z: Poppycock. I've had A LOT of lens flares show up in my work over the years, and while I'm not the most technical shooter I know, I have wore out a camera or two in a multitude of conditions.

"Signs in the Sky" would be more believable to me at this point...or the rocket launch. Cool lens flare if it is though. 

[WeekendWarrior]

   Let me guess? At ATS Phage and hes 20 friends spammed the pages with a lens flare? Ahh, so happy to be here, because that certainly ain't a lens flare!

Some new kind of rocket tech or what could it be?

[Amaterasu]

As best I can tell, there are two objects.  There's a blue one emitting a light and a pale one beneath and to the left of it.

One thing I'm sure of.  NOT a lens flare.

EDIT to add:  Been playing around with the clearer photo in Photoshop, and I have found that if it's a lens flare, it's the first one I've seen that bends - i.e., it is not a straight line of features.

Also, in the left hand side there's another circle of "lens flare" that comes out when the levels are adjusted.  When I get done I'll post them.

Interesting how so many stars are bright and clear...  Through Our atmosphere.  Yet...on the moon, cameras can't pick up stars at all (but can pick up brush strokes  [grin]).

[arc]

The image seems to be a short time lapse photo, perhaps about 6 to 8 seconds, apparently taken from a tripod or stable base, the stars leave a faint trail as they have moved during the time the shutter ws open (digital equivalent).

The house displays typical over lighting by long exposure, the object in the sky does not appear to move during the timeframe ruling out a rocket or aeroplane. The object appears to have been either moving very very slowly of perhaps even standing still.

Its either small and closer than it looks or large and quite far away.  We must remember the possibility of the chinese-lantern candle and hot air... but this does not look like it to me, and it is apparently still, not acsending as one would expect

arc

[Skell]

This is obviously Swamp/bog Gas... that or a (my favorite) Slow moving meteor.

[arc]

The more I look at this picture and zoom etc the more I think it was taken from inside another building looking through sheet glass window.  There are too many light blobs in the image for it to be just the open sky.

arc

[deuem]

Photo 1: the original
Photo 2: The original worked with daytime deuem
Photo 3: close up of 1
Photo 4: Daytime of 3
Photo 5: close up
Photo 6, 7 & 8: Balloons, Mixed & daytime of 5
Photo 9: close up of 4
Photo 10: Daytime on 9
Photo 11: close up of 9

I will leave this one up to you, to decide what you see.
When I did the preview It seemed to have lost a lot of vibrance.
I will try and see what happened or if it comes out different once posted.
Deuem