I saw it too from my front yard in Benicia!
Looked like a very fast moving satellite low over the northern
horizon , only a yellow-orange color.
About as bright as first magnitude star - not as bright as venus (as
was the preliminary hype - but I think it was supposed to brighten
further after passing over California)
Pretty cool!
Dennis
At 02:14 AM 1/15/2006, you wrote:
>Well, it's not often that one can write an OR within 5 minutes or so
>of an observing event, but I guess that's the way it goes with
>hypervelocity re-entries...
>
>My father and I just saw the Stardust re-entry from my folks' place
>here in Redding. Talk about fast!
>
>It's completely clear here, under a just-past-full moon. I happened
>to see a finder chart for Redding a few hours ago, just before I
>went to bed. This, plus the fact that there were two of us
>observing, was the key to seeing the SRC's reentry. I knew that
>atmospheric entry interface was due to occur when the SRC was right
>about between Cassiopea and the northern end of Auriga. The SRC was
>then supposed to pass a bit above Polaris, and on towards Arcturus
>and Alphecca. At the appointed time, I was looking intently at the
>Cas/Aur area, expecting to catch the beginning of the SRC's heating.
>I thought maybe I'd be able to use the image-stabilized binos to
>watch it start to heat up.
>
>It was my father who spotted the SRC, which appeared as a very
>bright star moving rapidly from about the tip of the Little Dipper
>over towards the Arcturus area. I'd say that it was somewhat
>brighter than Arcturus, and that it was visible to us for several
>seconds. I hadn't seen it at all in the Cas/Aur area. If there
>hadn't been the two of us observing, I rather doubt that I'd have
>caught it. It was a team effort.
>
>The color looked a bit yellowish, not pure white, rather like a
>yellow-orange star, kind of like, well, Arcturus, but a bit 'warmer'
>of a color than that. I can't say that I saw any obvious tail or trail.
>
>It was really cool to see the probe's reentry. Man, talk about
>hypervelocity! I hope that all went well with the parachute
>deployment and the recovery.
>
>Clear Skies,
>Marek
Received on Sun Jan 15 08:25:16 2006