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Scientists Fly to 2008's Most Dazzling Meteor Shower
coondoggie writes "On Thursday, SETI Institute and NASA scientists will take their research instruments and their coffee for a 10 hour continuous flight to map what they say will be the earth's most brilliant meteor shower of 2008. Scientists believe the Quadrantid meteor shower could flash over 100 visible meteors per hour at its peak, depending on location. A Gulfstream V aircraft will take off from San Jose, Calif., and fly 14 scientists and their instruments for 10 continuous hours at 47,000ft., over the Arctic and back to San Jose. The primary goal of the lengthy airborne mission is to observe the Quadrantid meteor shower in ideal and virtually unchanging conditions far above light pollution and clouds to determine when the meteor shower peaks and how the flow of meteors are dispersed."
What can you learn about a meteor shower from 47,000ft that you can't learn from the ground? What can you learn from the dispersion in the first place?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
What are they doing, exactly? Seeing if the rocks are intelligent? Making sure the planet isn't being seeded by aliens?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Meteors watch you!
Seriously, though, what's wrong with watching from an area on the ground that has low Light Pollution? Does it not cost enough?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Meteor showers are generally the result of the earth passing through a stream of small debris particles. Streams of notable size (large enough that you would reasonably call such an encounter a "shower") almost always are from fragments which break free from comets as they pass near the sun. Just as the comets are periodic, the positions of the debris trails are periodic- most meteor showers can now not only be anticipated in terms of time and optimal location, but in approximate meteor frequency as well.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Flying a plane into a meteor shower just seemed like a scientifically brilliant thing to do. Haven't these guys seen a Hollywood movie ever? The rocks will smash the plane into bits!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Google CEO has some private jets, and wanted to land on the airstrip next to the Googleples. Unfortunately, Moffet field is a military airfield operated by NASA. NASA and Google however agreed to scratch each others backs: Googles private jets will be part of NASA's scientific research program, and the can land the jets right next to the Googleplex.
I'm guessing giving the NASA guys a few rides in a private jet, and serving a few bottles of champagne is a small price to pay to be able to park your fleet of jets outside you office, and at the same time avoid all normal hassles.
I hope the pictures of the meteores turn out well.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
They have high-powered telescopes in areas with low light pollution, but these telescopes have a fixed position. Over the course of 10 hours, the Earth rotates quite a bit (10/24ths!), so the area of the Earth that is prime for observing the meteors moves over a large distance during the course of the shower.
Planes can also fly above weather, whereas telescopes cannot see through many weather phenomena.
Given the kind of costs that research entails, a flight like this probably isn't all that expensive.
In Seattle you can learn that the meteor shower is happening. In the Northwest getting above the clouds is almost your only hope of seeing such a thing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I snapped this image http://groups.imeem.com/iQrVatKB/photo/fIua32Y9X8/ with my Nikon D50 during the Aurigid shower last year and the data from this and other images was useful to Peter and his collaborators. So, take some time to snap some pictures if you're up for it, you never know it might be useful.
Also, the in-flight movie will be Armageddon. Headphone rental is five dollars.
Light pollution is a problem even for the largest observatories. There is virtually no regulation. The best they can do is buy up as much surrounding land as possible or ensure it's a protected natural environment preserve. But even the largest observatories are facing problems where the surroundings have become increasingly densely populated and light polluted over the years.
You can see the light dome for Calgary from 200 kilometers away, and Calgary has done a lot of work to reduce light pollution, being the first major metropolitan area in the world to replace all streetlight shades with full-cutoff models. It helps that the land is pretty flat here, but still. It's a very difficult problem to avoid, and it doesn't help that we largely don't even bother to try.
Random and weird software I've written.
Actually telescopes, binoculars, etc, are a lousy way to watch a meteor shower. The viewing area is just too small compared to the area across which the meteors streak, and the chances of one actually crossing the viewing area is negligible. Whether you're a city dweller doomed to seeing only fireballs, or a rural farmer who gets to see every last dust particle burning in the upper atmosphere, the naked eye works better.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Do you mean decimal? Because there aren't any units of revolution, neither metric nor imperial. Although I suppose the imperial unit of revolution should really be the Lenin.