[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Space X Finally Goes to Mars...

[Mike McCabe]

...well, sort of. Perhaps from a mythological perspective, anyway.
Yesterday was our first clear day/night in a while, so I was keen to get out some scopes and have a look at things in the sky. The solar observing was steadier than it has been recently, so that was at least somewhat rewarding, and the evening started off mostly clear but deteriorated rapidly, becoming un-observable by 9:30pm.
Knowing this was going to be the case, I deployed a simple setup to catch some looks at Jupiter, Mars, a few doubles and then some Messier objects. I'm hoping to engage in my first attempt at a Messier Marathon next spring, so I'm boning up on the star hops to as many objects as I can throughout the next year.
While working the western sky and the constellations Auriga and Gemini, suddenly a white streak appeared to rise out of the horns of Taurus. It was serendipitous in a way, because I was actually staring at the left-most foot area of the "kids" (or "twins" as they're sometimes also called) in an effort to find my starting point for M35. That streak was actually a Starlink satellite train, and obviously a recent one because from a naked eye perspective there was no space between the satellites.

Ancients seeing such a spectacle in the sky thousands of years ago might have crafted a mythological tale that went something like this; "The intrepid space travelers deftly navigated the field of the raging bull, and shortly after avoiding being gored by the tip of horn also saw luck befall them when Orion's club whiffed by with nothing more than a whooshing sound in their ears to show for it. Then crossing through the Gemini playground they barely missed being kicked off track by a boisterous kid, but once past that obstacle it was clear sailing all the way to Mars."
But this isn't ancient times,for better or for worse, and we know darn straight well what's going on up there;  https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-6-73
As you can see by the picture, it wasn't such a great night for exploring deep-sky objects such as Messier 'nebulae', but as soon as I saw that streak I knew what I was looking at and whipped out the pocket miracle for a shot (the term pocket miracle is my own creation - when you've begun your photography experience with the likes of Kodak 110's, Polaroid's, etc. and then 'advanced' to the Kodak Disc camera, well, you harbor a certain appreciation for the capabilities of our modern technology).

Heavens Above is a great resource for learning things about stuff you see flying across space. For example, in this case right after seeing the pass I was able to learn that there were 27 satellites in that row, and the total time from one end of the train to the other across any point in the sky was ten seconds...that's why I couldn't see any gaps. It was bumper-to-bumper on the Space Xpressway last night...see what I did there?  

And as you see here from the pass chart, oriented here to reflect the view toward the west as I saw it, their journey does indeed appear to end right beside Mars. They in fact disappeared completely from sight visually right at that point, looking as though they flew into a tunnel leading to the home of the Red Faced God of War.
And that's the way it was.
Over and out,
Mike M.





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