2015-06-22 - Ogilvie, MN - Other

A fuzzy bluish-white fireball moving initally West in a meandering trajectory that eventually became North West.

An object appeared above and in front of me as I was taking some time to watch the Aurora Borealis. It made no sound and made a wavering path initially West and then ending up heading Northwest.

The main object appeared round, but seemed to have a significant electrical charge as the object had a surrounding cloud or sphere of charged particles that was roughly half the diameter of the moon with the brighter center portion being about as bright as Jupiter initially and comparable for relative size from my vantage point.

It appeared to moving within the Aurora Borealis as the sky itself was clear, but the cloud of particles (assumed) is what made it distingly different as the visible stars and planets did not have that hazy appearance about them.

The center slowly faded in intensity at about the halfway point of it being visible, but the cloud remained illuminated of about the same color as the Aurora Borealis until it moved into a curtain of aurora as b! right as the object was.

The object appeared to be moving at about half the speed of a satellite if not slower due to the duration.

Its appearance initially as I faced it would have been about 30 degrees above the horizon, and when it disappeared it would have been about 45 degrees from the ground from my vantage point.


((NUFORC Note: Out-gassing event of spent rocket. PD))

((NOTE FROM MR. TED MOLCZAN))

Hello Peter,

Your hunch probably is correct.

The Sentinel 2A satellite was launched on a Vega rocket from the Guiana Space Center, last night at 9:52 PM EDT (Jun 23
01:52 UTC).

Coverage of the launch was here:

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/22/vv05-mission-status-center/

SeeSat-L received several reports of sightings near 23:49 EDT (3:49 UTC), of what appears to have been exhaust from the final burn of the Vega rocket's AVUM liquid fueled upper stage. That burn lowered the perigee to ensure that the object decays from orbit within a reasonable time, in order to curb the growth of space debris.

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0193.html

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0194.html

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0195.html

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0198.html

http://satobs.org/seesat/Jun-2015/0199.html

Marco Langbroek blogged his analysis:

http://sattrackcam.blogspot.nl/2015/06/aurora-hunter-images-last-moments-of.html

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Best regards,
Ted

((END NOTE))


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