Centaur Fuel dump - not a comet :-)

[NickH]

As some of you know, I almost had a kitten early Sunday morning, when I was out imaging, and spotted what looked like a giant naked eye comet. Convinced it was not, some of the kindly folk here have pointed me to

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

(details for the 19th Oct)

It was as follows

ROCKET FUEL DUMP: A Centaur rocket caused a minor sensation on Sunday night, Oct. 18th, when it flew over Europe and dumped a load of excess propellant. "We saw it at 9:15 pm local time (1915 UT)," report Federico and Chiara Bellini of Bodio Lomnago, Italy. "It looked like a comet with a fan-shaped tail."

Here's my image of it (one of about 35 taken to stack...:-))

EOS300D modded on a static tripod, 30s exposure, ISO800

[dark knight]

Wow that must have been a serious amount of dumped fuel,,have they not seen the prices at the pumps!!!

[barkis]

I wish I was up there with a Jerrycan. A big one.

Ron.

[jgs001]

Aha... so that's what it is... well caught Nick

[callump]

well looks remarkably similar, but the times dont seem to match up - 03:00UT vs. 19:15UT ?

/callump

[NickH]

Maybe there was a secondary dump out?

[callump]

Well possible, but I'm not sure these fuel dumps stick around in the same place for hours on end... take a look at the little movie on spaceweather...

If it didn't move at all (or much) over the couple of hours you were viewing, its unlikely to actually be in or above the atmosphere - more likely fixed to the ground.

/Callump

[George]

Pity they couldn't ignite it at the same time, now THAT would have been spectacular

[NickH]

could be ground based, it didn't move much, but it did move and faded out too...over a period of time..

So the puzzle remains maybe?

(and literally there is nothing much in my area...fields and the odd pop star)

[callump]

... and the odd pop star

cloud of waccy baccy smoke then, perhaps

my only guess would be some sort of searchlight beam, lighting up some thin cloud...

Not very convincing, though, i would agree...

Have to classify it as a ufo then...

/callump

[NickH]

If it were coming from Salibury plain maybe...as the army do a lot of testing,. but it was coming from Avebury...which is pitch black.. and the "thin cloud" was the same shap as that fuel dump... plus, never seen anything like it before..

It's odd, but I am erring on fuel dump still

[Taff]

Hi Nick' what a great capture.Mark

[neil phillips]

Thats very odd Nick what you describe. it doesnt seem to fit in to the dump sighting yet was the same night ? and of similar appearance, yet the wrong time and behaved more stationary ?

I saw the fly over too, it did look odd.

when it went off into the distance i could hardly see it any more. then about a minute latter i saw a diffuse starlike ight in roughly the same position as the flyover had just gone, and it was slowly falling.

looiking like a fuzzy star. I put the binos on it, and it looked the same, a glowing gas ball.

I assumed it was the fuel dump that had brightened again over on the horizen. But i cant be certain of that ?

Was this fuel dump planned ? if so why wasnt the astro community informed of this ?

After all it was likely to cause a stir. which it has.

At the vey least yours sounds like a different event, yet similar, and on the same night. Your photo looks similar to the large cloud that was behind the flyover that i saw.

It looked like it was glowing for some time, as it slowly drifted in the same direction. If it was in space how come the fuel cloud difted ?

was the motion of the rocket the cause for the drift. was the fuel ejected backwards ? i assume it wasnt ignited so could not really have been glowing .But it did look like that ?

[NickH]

It looked like it was glowing, but to be honest, it could have been any number of things... he fuel dump seems most similar/plausible still, but I am happy to defer to anyone who has a better suggestion