Sunday, October 10, 2010

First morning satellite

Lil N got up at 6:00am after sleeping through the night (despite even falling out of bed). So, I went outside to stare at the sky. Lil N followed as well. Lil N was fascinated by the stars and kept saying 'there's Mars' and 'there's Earth'. Armed with nothing more than a pen and paper, I finally spotted a satellite going straight overhead. I also saw a shooting star after that.

Here's the time-line of this morning:
Date: 10-Oct-2010 Sunday

6:16am - CloudSat DPAF - 4.2 Magnitude
Int'l Designator: 2006-016-D
First sighting! This object is DPAF (Dual Payload Attach Fitting) from a Delta 2 rocket. This particular rocket launched two satellites: CALIPSO and CloudSat. CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation) is an American-French (NASA-CNES) meteorological satellite. CloudSat is an American meteorological satellite.

6:20am - shooting star
WOOSH!

2 comments:

Todd S. said...

Shooting star on your b-day...that's gotta be a good sign, right? :-) Happy birthday, bro!

Ian Stewart said...

happy birthday, 10/10/10.
ya know who else is an astronomer... Brian May!