Atlas Centaur 5 Fuel Dump on December 10, 2007
By Ed Sunder
Observer: Ed Sunder
Location: Flintstone, Georgia, USA
Naked Eye
December 10, 2007 – 5:50 pm
Sketched generated with Adobe Photoshop over star background
generated by Starry Night.
On December 10, 2007, an Atlas 5 rocket launched a classified payload into orbit. After completing it’s first orbit, the depleted Centaur upper stage put on a spectacular show for eastern North America as it dumped its residual fuel overboard. Sightings were reported from Louisiana to Canada. Ed Sunder witnessed the event from Flintstone, Georgia, USA. Like many who observed it, Ed was not immediately aware it was a fuel dump. He noted, “…at 6:50 I looked up in the night sky and nearly directly overhead was a magnitude 1 comet! The core was exceptionally bright (at least mag 1) and the coma was very large – the whole thing was nearly the size of the moon in appearance….I can’t describe how excited I was – I literally had goosebumps. I just wish I’d brought my camera and binoculars.”
Although he was not able to photograph the event, he was able to create a sketch of what he saw later that evening. Using a star field generated by his planetarium software, Ed illustrated the comet-shaped phenomenon so others could visualize the event.
Ed, thanks for giving permission to present your sketch here. It’s great to see how an astronomical sketch tackles a man-made space phenomemon.
Jeremy
Ed,
That’s a great rendering of a very striking and unusual visual phenomenom. I was unable to witness this event due to clouds but was aware that it would be potentially visible thanks to a small subset of visual astronomers who track these launches and wait to see if they can detect the fuel dump.
I was fortunate to see one of these Atlas Centaur fuel dumps back in August 2004 just by accident. I went online to see if anyone knew what was going on and discovered that a bunch of Canadian observers had been waiting for it. 🙂
Michael Rosolina
Friars Hill, WV USA