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APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:54 am
by APOD Robot
Image Waterway to Orbit

Explanation: The 32nd shuttle mission to the International Space Station, STS-130, left planet Earth on February 8. Its early morning launch to orbit from Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A followed the long, graceful, eastward arc seen in this 2 minute time exposure. Well composed, the dramatic picture also shows the arc's watery reflection from the Intracoastal Waterway Bridge, in Ponte Vedra, Florida, about 115 miles north of the launch site. In the celestial background a waning crescent Moon and stars left their own short trails against the still dark sky. The brightest star trail near the moon was made by red supergiant Antares, alpha star of the constellation Scorpius.

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Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 5:16 am
by neufer
A pool of water. Of that size. Close to Ponte Vedra, Florida, Sure.....

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 8:07 am
by l3p3r
snap!

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 1:28 pm
by rstevenson
neufer wrote:A pool of water. Of that size. Close to Ponte Vedra, Florida, Sure.....
:lol:

Rob

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:32 pm
by odysseus55
Great shot.
What is the non-streaked dim reddish orb below and right of the moon?
I thought it was reflection from the similarly colored light source below - but that is the only light reflecting.

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 8:32 pm
by JohnD
Why are there no boats moored at the palatial landing stages?
Looks like Ghost City on water!

John

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 9:13 pm
by BMAONE23
The missing boats are probably loaded with boaters and their friends who headed south to view the launch from a closer distance. If I had a boat moored there, I certainly would be doing that

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 9:34 pm
by emc
Very cool 8-)

I wondered about the red spot also.

This genre of APOD is among my favorites. I like the space/sky/land/scape motif. And I appreciate that deep space objects are identified in the Explanations… good show!

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 6:25 pm
by DavidLeodis
Superb photograph. The star trails also show that stars move noticeably even in just a 2 minute exposure. :)

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 6:29 pm
by DavidLeodis
Just noticed that next to my name in my post above it states "Science Officer". What the heck is that :?: :?.

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2010 12:50 am
by komic
Nice, but what is this red dot?!?

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2010 2:04 am
by neufer
komic wrote:Nice, but what is this red dot?!?
  • -------------------------------
    George: What is that? Is that cashmere?

    Jerry: Yeah. She would love cashmere.

    George: Who doesn't like cashmere? Find me one person in the world that doesn't like cashmere. It's too expensive.

    Jerry: Look at this. It's 85 dollars marked down from 600.

    George: Wow. Excuse me, Miss?

    Woman: Yes?

    George: How come this sweater is only 85 dollars?

    Woman: (showing the dot) Oh, here. This is why.

    George: What? I don't see anything.

    Woman: See this red dot?

    George: Oh yeah.

    Jerry: Oh it's damaged. (grabbing the sweater)

    George: (grabbing the sweater back) Well it's not really damaged. 85 dollars huh?

    Woman: There's no exchanges on this.

    George: You think she would care about the red dot?

    Jerry: It's hard to say.

    George: I don't even think she'd notice it. Can you see it?

    Jerry: Well I can see it.

    George: Yeah, but you know where it is.

    Jerry: Well what do you want me to do? Not look at it?

    George: Pretend you didn't know it was there. Can you see it?

    Jerry: It's hard to pretend because I know where it is.

    George: Well just take an overview. Can't you just take an overview?

    Jerry: You want me to take an overview?

    George: Please.

    Jerry: I see a very cheap man holding a sweater trying to get away with something. That's my overview.
    -------------------------------

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:23 am
by natronics
You know what really bothered me is the brightening in the flight path around 2/3rds of the way up. I kept thinking it must be the throttle up, but it happens much to late. In fact it is after SRB separation. Any idea exactly why it get brighter after SRB separation? Also here is a lengthy discussion of how I figured out the timing in the photo.

http://mechanicalintegrator.com/?p=293

And for those interested the red dot is defiantly an internal lens reflection from the moon:
- Zooming in the smudge in crescent shaped.
- There are at least two other reflections (of street lights) consistent with the direction and brightness of an internally reflected moon. Look carefully.

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 3:55 pm
by neufer
natronics wrote:You know what really bothered me is the brightening in the flight path around 2/3rds of the way up. I kept thinking it must be the throttle up, but it happens much to late. In fact it is after SRB separation. Any idea exactly why it get brighter after SRB separation?
115 miles of tropospheric air & dust scattering can produce a lot of dimming.

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:05 pm
by natronics
neufer wrote:115 miles of tropospheric air & dust scattering can produce a lot of dimming.

But then why does it get brighter again? It's not significantly higher in altitude or in local horizon coordinates (has basically the same airmass) than when it is dim right before the brightening. Plus the atmosphere drops off logarithmically to the first order, but the brightening seems very sudden.

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:09 pm
by BMAONE23
Might it be possible that the light of the tail plume is being brightened by passing through a band of ice crystal Lenses that act to enhance the light?

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:45 pm
by emc
Just realized that this APOD reminds me of the Star Trek logo!

Can the flare in discussion be a byproduct of the ozone layer?

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 10:42 pm
by neufer
emc wrote:Can the flare in discussion be a byproduct of the ozone layer?
Atmospheric chemistry seldom generates light;
but Shuttle chlorine emissions were intimately connected with the history of ozone science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion wrote:
<<The basic physical and chemical processes that lead to the formation of an ozone layer in the Earth's stratosphere were discovered by Sydney Chapman in 1930. Briefly, short-wavelength UV radiation splits an oxygen (O2) molecule into two oxygen (O) atoms, which then combine with other oxygen molecules to form ozone. Ozone is removed when an oxygen atom and an ozone molecule "recombine" to form two oxygen molecules, i.e. O + O3 → 2O2. In the 1950s, David Bates and Marcel Nicolet presented evidence that various free radicals, in particular hydroxyl (OH) and nitric oxide (NO), could catalyze this recombination reaction, reducing the overall amount of ozone. These free radicals were known to be present in the stratosphere, and so were regarded as part of the natural balance – it was estimated that in their absence, the ozone layer would be about twice as thick as it currently is.

In 1970 Prof. Paul Crutzen pointed out that emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a stable, long-lived gas produced by soil bacteria, from the Earth's surface could affect the amount of nitric oxide (NO) in the stratosphere. Crutzen showed that nitrous oxide lives long enough to reach the stratosphere, where it is converted into NO. Crutzen then noted that increasing use of fertilizers might have led to an increase in nitrous oxide emissions over the natural background, which would in turn result in an increase in the amount of NO in the stratosphere. Thus human activity could have an impact on the stratospheric ozone layer. In the following year, Crutzen and (independently) Harold Johnston suggested that NO emissions from supersonic aircraft, which fly in the lower stratosphere, could also deplete the ozone layer.

[In 1973] Richard Stolarski and Ralph Cicerone at the University of Michigan had shown that Cl is even more efficient than NO at catalyzing the destruction of ozone. Similar conclusions were reached by Michael McElroy and Steven Wofsy at Harvard University. Neither group, however, had realized that CFC's were a potentially large source of stratospheric chlorine — instead, they had been investigating the possible effects of HCl emissions from the Space Shuttle, which are very much smaller.

In 1974 Frank Sherwood Rowland, Chemistry Professor at the University of California at Irvine, and his postdoctoral associate Mario J. Molina suggested that long-lived organic halogen compounds, such as CFCs, might behave in a similar fashion as Crutzen had proposed for nitrous oxide. James Lovelock (most popularly known as the creator of the Gaia hypothesis) had recently discovered, during a cruise in the South Atlantic in 1971, that almost all of the CFC compounds manufactured since their invention in 1930 were still present in the atmosphere. Molina and Rowland concluded that, like N2O, the CFCs would reach the stratosphere where they would be dissociated by UV light, releasing Cl atoms.>>

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 8:30 am
by natronics
So here is the problem: the period of brightening shows up in nearly every night-time time lapse photo of any shuttle launch I can find (assuming that the contrast is good enough to see anything in the first place and that the exposure is long enough). I can also say that the brightening correlates pretty strongly with period of time during and/or right after SRB separation. It appears to last several seconds.

The fact that it happens in other photos with other launches and conditions rules out anything that has to do with weather, the camera, tricks of light, or such things. It's real phenomenon. Since the shuttle is more or less at the same altitude and speed each time at SRB burnout then I have to also say that it correlates well with a those speeds and altitudes, for reference it is ~50 km in altitude and going ~Mach 4 during this time. I still tend to think it is something about the SRB's themselves that is causing the brightness. My current theory is that when the SRB's tumble they spread out the remaining exhaust gases enough that they momentarily look brighter. Blooming, so-to-speak. But I don't really know how I would go about quantifying that and seeing if it lines up with the evidence.

Is there anything special about 50 km and Mach 4 that creates more light / filters less light?

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 8:38 am
by bystander
SRB Seperation
There are four booster separation motors on each end of each SRB. The BSMs separate the SRBs from the external tank. The solid rocket motors in each cluster of four are ignited by firing redundant NSD pressure cartridges into redundant confined detonating fuse manifolds.

Re: APOD: Waterway to Orbit (2010 Feb 13)

Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:56 am
by natronics
Oh right I forgot to mention the ullage motors, those are common to nearly all staged rockets. I assumed that the BSM's would be too faint and short-lived to been seen in the photograph, thought I could be wrong. Does anyone know how bright they are?