Things are looking up #7

Oh dear.

In a NASA simulation of an asteroid impact, scientists concluded they couldn’t stop a space rock from decimating Europe – Business Insider
A group of experts from US and European space agencies attended a weeklong exercise led by NASA in which they faced a hypothetical scenario: An asteroid 35 million miles away was approaching the planet and could hit within six months. With each passing day of the exercise, the participants learned more about the asteroid’s size, trajectory, and chance of impact. Then they had to cooperate and use their technical knowledge to see if anything could be done to stop the space rock.

The experts fell short. The group determined that none of Earth’s existing technologies could stop the asteroid from striking given the six-month time frame of the simulation. In this alternate reality, the asteroid crashed into eastern Europe.

US military has ‘no plan’ to shoot down debris from falling Chinese rocket – The Guardian
Speaking with reporters, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said the hope was the rocket would land in the ocean and that the latest estimate was that it would come down between Saturday and Sunday. … The Global Times, a Chinese tabloid published by the official People’s Daily, characterized reports that the rocket is “out of control” and could cause damage as “Western hype”. The situation is “not worth panicking about”, it said, citing industry insiders.

Let’s hope those things whizzing above our heads are just satellites and nothing scarier.

SpaceX Starlink satellites, not UFOs, spotted in night sky over Washington state – Fox News
“What we actually saw was the 60 Starlink satellites that had just been deployed this afternoon and they were still in low orbit, and they were still clustered together so we call this, like, the Starlink train,’” Davenport told KING. “You see, like, a little chain of satellites all close together, reflecting sunlight back at us.”

For more UFO debunking, you must check out Metabunk.

Cigar shaped UFO over Angels Landing, Utah [Probably Starlink] – Metabunk
That doesn’t look like a plane to me at all but I’m pretty certain that you got video of the initial satellite train of the Starlink 22 deployment. A Falcon 9 had launched from Cape Canaveral about three hours earlier. The sats are still clustered together fairly closely since they had only recently been released.

Utah Drone video of UFO [Probably an insect] – Metabunk
A few days ago, a youtube video was posted on Reddit r/UFO’s showing an object flying by a drone … With these clear videos is I think we could do some calculations, or other advanced analysis? I am tending towards cgi myself. … Here’s an animation I quickly did of a bug sized object (1cm across) moving at a bug like speed (about 7km/h) towards an approaching camera moving at drone like speed (30km/h). For the FOV I used that of the DJI Phantom Pro 4, the forward camera of which is listed as 50 degrees.

Mick West, the man behind Metabunk, is incredibly thorough in his work, as can be seen by this thread investigating UFOs over Loch Ness. But perhaps there are some satellites overhead right now?

See a satellite tonight – James Darpinian
No telescope required. Click to search for viewing times at your location.

But even on a clear night you might have a problem with light pollution.

Light pollution map
A mapping application that displays light pollution related content over Microsoft Bing base layers (road and hybrid Bing maps). The primary use was to show VIIRS/DMSP data in a friendly manner, but over the many years it received also some other interesting light pollution related content like SQM/SQC measurements, World Atlas 2015 zenith brigtness, almost realtime clouds , aurora prediction and IAU observatories features.

England’s quite bright everywhere, especially where I live, though I can see just how well positioned the Kielder Observatory is now. And I’m guessing those islands in the North Sea are oil rigs? Look how so well defined Belgium’s borders are, much like the line between North and South Korea further round the globe.

Reminds me of when I tried looking for Street Views across Europe once. Are there no streets in Germany?

Featured image SpaceX Starlink mission